Beam Fighters

[Barkhorn]

In general I'm not much for beam fighters unless they are used as interceptors to engage enemy unarmed scouts or commercial ships. Any other larger ship with a decent set of weapons just have to sneeze in the fighters basic vicinity and they die.

The problem with beam fighters is their paper thin armour and vulnerable internal components.

Beam fighters make good pickets.  Pair them with a scout fighter and use them to intercept enemy missile fighters before they can get their missiles away.

[xenoscepter]

It's just some wonkiness with initiative and things at less than 10,000 km that aren't firing at missiles in final fire. It was in VB6.

Basically, if you engaged the enemy at 10,000km, but didn't get to move first, the enemy would move away 9/10. This movement in VB6 did not provoke return fire unless you had a beam FCS with more than 10k km range. So depending on the speed of the enemy, according to vb6 rules, you might not get a shot off with your ship, but the enemy will... depending on your turn order.

20,000 km range was simply the range where no matter what, the enemy would provoke reaction fire. It had to do with weirdness in the per increment cycle. Missiles also had a thing where at 10k km or less pd wouldn't fire. That was fixed in C#. Unsure about the beam thing though.

However, IIRC, reaction has changed in C#.

Officers in VB6 had an "Initiative" rating. It influenced turn order.

[Garfunkel]

since the smallest interval is 5 seconds, anything under 20k km is very easily out-ranged.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general I'm not much for beam fighters unless they are used as interceptors to engage enemy unarmed scouts or commercial ships. Any other larger ship with a decent set of weapons just have to sneeze in the fighters basic vicinity and they die.

The problem with beam fighters is their paper thin armour and vulnerable internal components.

Beam fighters make good pickets.  Pair them with a scout fighter and use them to intercept enemy missile fighters before they can get their missiles away.

Yes... that is one way I use them... as interceptors to target stuff that have relatively low chance to attack them. Although even missile fighter will have a decent chance to destroy them before they get to fire though in C# as even a 100 resolution FC can target a fighter at a decent distance now and that is if the fighters don't have their own anti fighter/FAC escort with them which they might in a multi-human faction game. 

Beam fighters have its use... but FAC armed with beams are something I generally prefer. Interceptors tend to be mostly for engaging enemy missiles and the occasional unarmed scout or commercial ship.

[xenoscepter]

Gauss make good orbital bombardment in C#. Small ones are also nice for cramming a little extra oomph into a railgun fighter, or some pd into a missile fighter. Better for FACs in that role though.

Railguns, the 10cm ones, are great PD, and excellent for making attacks of opportunity.

High-Powered Microwaves, specifically the 10cm ones, fit neatly in a 10cm railgun fighter design. You can't refit fighters, but they make nice anti-fighter compliments and don't need a total re-design. I like them as a variant for my fighter commanders.

Mesons... are nerfed to hell. Not good for a fighter.

Lasers make a damn good weapon for countering enemy beam fighters of other types. Reduced size ones also hit really, really hard and make a nice alpha due to their speed, which allows them to evade fire better then other ships. Knowing there are fighters on the way and being able to do something about it are very different things.

Try to use some long range AMMs from your supporting ships to create a "strike envelope". A nice sized Res 1 sensors, plus a Res 1 MFCS to match, paired with Long Range AMMs can allow you to shoot down enemy missiles that engage your fighters.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Beam fighters are fine as long as you treat them as detachable beam mounts rather than trying to chase down enemy fleets from range.   It's simply not practical for beam fighters to have enough point defence capability to knock down AMM salvos in a remotely even fight.    In my experience, they work well with Battlestar strategies.

[Father Tim]

Also, what's this 20,000 km rule? Is that just five seconds times the presumed enemy speed of 4000 km/s, or is it a hard rule?

Because beam weapon accuracy actually ramps hyperbolicly to infinite at 0 km, the 'to hit' calculation treats all ranges of less than 10,000 km as 10,000 km.  This means if you have a fire control that can't reach 10,000 km (say, because they are low tech and you went for reduced range to get reduced size) it will never hit anything.

[simast]

I think that 23 crew might be an issue.. Military Hangars now add 20 crew berths each. So in general carriers can support fighters with 1 crew per 1 HS.

[DFNewb]

I thought initiative was mostly random, no? (I don't have much combat experience tbh)

Also, what's this 20,000 km rule? Is that just five seconds times the presumed enemy speed of 4000 km/s, or is it a hard rule?

You have 100 percent chance multiplier to hit at 50 percent max range for beam fire control. You have 50 percent chance multiplier at max range.
Since 10k is min range, you want BFC to be at least 20k so you can get max percent chance to hit at 10k (point blank).

EDIT: After testing a bit I think this is wrong and the 20k thing only applies to final fire PD.

[Father Tim]

I think that 23 crew might be an issue.. Military Hangars now add 20 crew berths each. So in general carriers can support fighters with 1 crew per 1 HS.

C# Aurora should be ignoring parasite craft actual crew rating in the assumption that the built-in '20 per Hangar' is sufficient.  The actual crew numbers will only come up once the carrier takes internal damage to life support and/or crew members.

[DFNewb]

Made with the auto assigned starting tech + I researched improved nuclear pulse engines and some fuel efficiency tech.

The range is meant so it can cover Saturn inwards of Sol. perhaps a size 0.2 sensor would be better incase of missiles. I could probably get it faster with lower range if I wanted to but it's really just meant to be a very light fight to chase down targets that have been hit with missiles and finish them off. I have better active sensors on pretty much everything (size 1 with res 1 10x the size, even on civ ships) so they should be fine at defending against missiles hopefully with the bonus to hit from tracking them. The chance to hit a 10000km/s target is listed as 10 percent. 20000km/s is 5 percent. Have not tested them yet.

You can get a 9000km\s fighter with matching BFC with half the range and maybe 2 or 3 less gauss if you wanted to with same tech.

Dagger class Fighter      500 tons       16 Crew       67.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 60    EM 0
6009 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 5      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 3
Maint Life 3.97 Years     MSP 8    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 1    5YR 12    Max Repair 7.50 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 7 months    Morale Check Required   

Improved Nuclear Pulse Engine  EP15.00 (4)    Power 60.0    Fuel Use 697.14%    Signature 15.00    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range 2.6 billion km (4 days at full power)

Gauss Cannon R200-8.00 (6x3)    Range 12 000km     TS: 6 009 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 8.00%     RM 20 000 km    ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R12-TS6000 (1)     Max Range: 12 000 km   TS: 6 000 km/s     17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor AS1-R1 (1)     GPS 2     Range 1.5m km    MCR 136.2k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

[Gyrfalcon]

You'd be better off with one (33% I believe?) Gauss Cannon instead of 3x 8% gauss cannon. Sure, you think they're nice and small and perfect for a fighter, but that 8% chance to hit means that they'll generally miss hitting what they're shooting at.

[DFNewb]

You'd be better off with one (33% I believe?) Gauss Cannon instead of 3x 8% gauss cannon. Sure, you think they're nice and small and perfect for a fighter, but that 8% chance to hit means that they'll generally miss hitting what they're shooting at.

Math says you are wrong. Also that's 6 gauss cannons not 3.

Expected value of the fighter's weapons is 3.06 with a deviation. If I put 1 100 percent gauss on the fighter it would be just 3 but always 3.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11325.0

[Jorgen_CAB]

You'd be better off with one (33% I believe?) Gauss Cannon instead of 3x 8% gauss cannon. Sure, you think they're nice and small and perfect for a fighter, but that 8% chance to hit means that they'll generally miss hitting what they're shooting at.

Math says you are wrong. Also that's 6 gauss cannons not 3.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11325.0

17% are probably one of the better choices if you can fit it into the design... the main reason is that it is the smallest cannon at 50t that also have 1 HTK... it also have a slight edge in to-hit for its size... even it is a very small difference.

The main problem with PD fighters is that fighter no longer get advantage in the fire-controls anymore... so it will become very expansive to make PD fighters. I would still make them but I would make them relatively large and would also consider FAC sized PD versions even to protect bomber squadrons. Rail-guns can probably also be more efficient than Gauss in that role due to speed benefits.

[DFNewb]

You'd be better off with one (33% I believe?) Gauss Cannon instead of 3x 8% gauss cannon. Sure, you think they're nice and small and perfect for a fighter, but that 8% chance to hit means that they'll generally miss hitting what they're shooting at.

Math says you are wrong. Also that's 6 gauss cannons not 3.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11325.0

17% are probably one of the better choices if you can fit it into the design... the main reason is that it is the smallest cannon at 50t that also have 1 HTK... it also have a slight edge in to-hit for its size... even it is a very small difference.

The main problem with PD fighters is that fighter no longer get advantage in the fire-controls anymore... so it will become very expansive to make PD fighters. I would still make them but I would make them relatively large and would also consider FAC sized PD versions even to protect bomber squadrons. Rail-guns can probably also be more efficient than Gauss in that role due to speed benefits.

The changes to BFC made almost no differences. You can put them 0.25x range and then set the tracking speed equal to the fighters movement speed unless you are using turreted Gauss, and it's pretty much the same as in VB.