Actually the trade off isn't moving vs paying support its between being able to upgrade and paying support. Bases pay support and they don't move. If fighters are changed to pay maintaince then they will have to change to being upgradable also.
I haven't had the problems you encounter with fighters. Especially if I play tactical. Sure the fighters on a planet might wipe out my first fleet that visits them if they take me by surprise but after that my PD will take them out easily. I will just build enough to take them out. That is if I would let them sit long enough to build that many fighters in the first place. I never see that many fighters on a planet how many turns into the game are we talking about 200? Even if I play in a large quadrant my games never seem to Last that long.
Now fighters vs the AI in tactical yes you can overwelm them because they are not prepared for that type of battle. If you mod the txt files to account for that then they will have a better chance. But there are a lot of different ways to overwelm the AI, fighters may not even be the easiest way to do that but it definately will work. You can overwelm the AI with mines, satellites, missles, or escorts if you want to
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[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 28 January 2001).]