[Zanthis]

5. And how do fighters fit into all this?
First off, a lone fighter works exactly the same as a ship...almost. You cannot fire only one of multiple identical weapons. All DUC-III's on a single fighter fire at once or not at all. In fact, you must unhighlight all of them or they all fire.

Further, all identical items are combined into a single super-weapon. DUC-III normally do 15 damage each. Mount four on a fighter and you almost have one weapon doing 60 damage. I say almost, because there is a separate roll to hit for each weapon. So if you have only a 50% to hit, your quad-DUC3's will normally behave like a single weapon dealing 30 damage, although it could do either 0 (all four miss) or up to 60.

Incidentally, DUC-III and DUC-II count as different weapons and do not combine in the above described manner. Also, this combining effect is not bad, and can be good. That means you normally don't want to mix weapons on your fighters.

Once you start grouping them, things get more confusing. Like lone fighters, all weapons of the same type combine, but across the entire group. To avoid firing your DUC3's in a squad of fighters, you must unhighlight all of them. Leave even one highlighted and ever fighter will fire their DUC3's.

It should not be surprising that this means larger fighter Groups rip up crystalline armor easier, not to mention help you bypass emmisive armor. Of course, larger Groups are easier to kill due to damage streaming.

If it weren't for how crystalline armor currently works, I'd say the combining effect of fighters is unimportant. It doesn't really effect how things play out. But with CA the way it stands, you might want to consider using larger Groups when dealing with ships protected by lots of CA.