I recently had my race design and built ground attack fighters, and then deployed them to attack a known ground force that has consistently survived all of my efforts to dislodge it. It didn't go well, and I'm not sure why.
I have a couple of questions because it is weird that your fighters are not firing at all:
- Do you have active sensor contact with the enemy ground forces? It looks like it from the log, but just to be sure.
- Are your fighters loaded with one of the fighter pod types? These work like ordnance except they are not expended, but you still need to build and load them.
- Is the enemy race hostile?
- If nothing else works, you might try using normal beam fighters instead of ones equipped with fighter pods. The mechanics on the wiki aren't clear, so these may be able to carry out those missions instead of fighter pod-armed fighters. This seems unlikely but it's worth checking.
Looking at the events list, I am actually curious if it is one of these issues, as the ability to do reconnaissance on a SAD/SEAD mission might be worth the cost of losing some fighters. Maybe not against NPRs/spoilers which have very predictable compositions but against other player races it could be useful, which would be a historic first for GSFs.
Otherwise, ground fighters are currently just... awful. They are expensive for what is really a minimal effect and die far too easily to AA fire (the AA mechanics also have a weirdness which means that at low enough tech levels, some of the AA components actually have no effect - but this isn't the issue here). Plus, the amount of micromanagement required to get a useful (i.e., numerous) force to be effective is tiresome to say the least. About the only role they have is forcing other player races (in a multiple player race game) to build AA units.
1. Yes - Although the fighters don't have sensors, the orbiting mothership has active sensors, and they are activated, and did acquire the enemy ground force prior to the launch of the fighters.
2. Yes - the fighters are equipped with a 20 space pod bay, and have loaded a 20 space autocannon.
3. Yes - The enemy race was designated as hostile long ago, and I have engaged in combat with them in the past, always disastrously for me, although I have managed to clear out their STO's, at some considerable loss.
4. I have tried to attack the ground forces with my other fighters, both beam and missile armed, using the Flak Suppression command and the search and destroy command, but nothing happened. I think.