[geoschmo]

Originally posted by primitive:
"Know when to hold them"
When your enemy have sufficient PDC ready, you hold them. You don't win many battles with them, but you win the war with economics. Strategy gaming at its best

I will agree there is some amount of satisfaction from planning and executing a strategy and having it come off succesfully. Hitting the enemy where is ain't can be quite exhillerating. And you might be able to get them to work marginally if you are extremely dilligent at maintaining the suprise factor and go through the micro managment neccesary to pull off the plan you have suggested here. But fighters aren't effective unless the enemy is totally unprepared for them. The plan you suggest depends too much on the enemy doing something to fall into your trap so to speak. It will work if they are unprepared, but will be a failure if they are, and isn't noticably cheaper in resources, isn't noticibly faster really, and has a lot more work involved in setting it up. The alternative, ships and no fighters, well, just works.

Maybe I am wierd, but I don't stop putting a couple of PDC on every warship just because the enemy stops, or never starts, using fighters and missles in a game. If the players you are facing do that, it would explain why you have success with fighters. I suspect it's just generally your level of skill though and not the fighters. I have faced you a few times and remember you to be a tough fight with or without them.

I'd love it if fighters could be effective longer into the game, but as far as I have seen in the stock game they aren't.