[PvK]

It depends on your Aggressiveness. If you have low aggressiveness, you might have a hard time ever hitting fighters with PDC. If you have average or better Aggressiveness (and/or cultural bonuses) then although the fighter tree starts out powerful, it can eventually become less so.

For one thing, fighters can never upgrade, so enemies stockpiling fighters will tend to have a lot of old designs (though these will still be dangerous).

But the thing is that even in Proportions, there are more ways for ships to add accuracy bonuses, than there are for fighters to add defense. And since I couldn't alter the way SE4 combines to-hit penalties, it just takes enough accuracy bonuses before suddenly PDC is looking a lot more like it did in unmodded SE (fighter doom):

* Combat sensors go up to +56 (at a big cost) while fighter ECM only goes up to +30.

* Ships can train up to +13, and fleets up to (?) +5 - fighters can't train at all.

* Fighters don't receive racial/cultural defensive/combat bonuses, but ships do.

* Bases and weapon platforms can use mounts and _Fire_Control_Centers_ to become able to hit fighters with heavy weapons, making sauce out of them. I watched one of Fryon's attack fleets with dozens of carriers loaded with fighters lose all of their hundreds of big shielded fighters mainly to an AI homeworld's weapon platforms (which I don't think even had Fire Control Centers - not sure).

* Ships can use PD mounts on heavy weapons to smack fighters for a lot of damage.

* Ships can add elite bridge and Aux Con equipment for another +8.

* Small escorts get accuracy bonuses, too.

* Racial tech areas offer some other combat bonuses that can be used to get into the slaughter numbers for PDC.

Etc.

However it still takes a lot of effort to achieve that, so fighters still remain dangerous, but not supreme.

Fighters do remain pretty tough though, and fighters designed to intercept them is generally a good way to counter them throughout the game.

PvK