[Alneyan]

The only point of launching less than the maximum is to hassle PDC, and avoid the annoying "one hit kills ten fighters" phenomenon. If you have nothing better to do, making a *lot* of fighter stacks might work, but that would be a micromanaging hell.

If you are serious about using fighters, you should research some Shielding as soon as possible, and put it on your fighters. A Mini Shield III is enough to soak up one PDC V hit, which is definitively not bad at all. I would advise against researching the bigger Carriers though, since they are very expensive to research, and a Battleship/Dreadnought will do just as well (or a Light Carrier for this matter). Bigger fighters may be useful for you, but I am not too fond of them.

However, going up to level III in Fighters gives you the Mini Combat Sensors III, which are very useful to improve the accuracy of your fighters; the enemy ships will have ship training (up to 20%, so a 20% penalty to offence and defence for your fighters), and very likely the Scattering/Stealth Armours, resulting in an additional +30% bonus to defence for the enemy ships; until destruction of these pieces of armour at any rate. The ships will have a much better ECM as well (compared to your Combat Sensors), resulting in yet another 30% penalty for your offence. And there is then a -10% penalty per square, which will at the very least be of 10%.

At the end of the day, you have a -90% chance to hit at point blank range, but fortunately have a +50% bonus built in with your fighter hulls, for a total result of 60% odds to hit. Still, if you do not put the small Combat Sensors III, your odds to hit will collapse from 60% to 30% at range 1, hence the importance of these devices. On the other hand, Small ECM III is probably not that important, since your fighters *will* get hit very, very often by PDC and its whooping accuracy bonus of +70% (thrown in the +35% edge of Combat Sensors III against Fighters ECM III, and you have a 99% to get hit by PDC at range 1).

On the same matter, you have to train your fighter fleets to avoid get any further penalty to your offence; fortunately for you, fighters are equal to ships in this regard, but you will have a tough time getting a fleet experience above 20%.

The main strength of fighters lies in their defensive power, making them perhaps the most powerful one-shot defence available to you. Put 20,000 fighters over a wormhole, and watch the sparks fly as an enemy fleet attempts to warp in (that requires you to have secured all your borders except this one wormhole obviously). It is mostly useful for smallish Empires depending on trade, remote-mining and other external income sources; if you were to produce a big fleet, you would be at the mercy of maintenance when this income collapsed, unlike units, which would remain even once you have lost most of your income.

On the other hand, if you are the most powerful Empire in the galaxy, I do not see fighters as a really needed part of your fleet. More warships should do the trick here, as your income should be rather stable. The only exception would be a very long period of peace, where massive building of units may pay off in the long run.

A Last point you may want to consider for defence: some drones filled with armour and/or shielding may work to soak up PDC fire. Make sure to change their "ship" strategies to something else than "Kamikaze", and it may help your fighters survive the PDC onslaught.


I have yet to really succeed in using fighters as an offensive weapon, since Carriers are expensive if you really need a *lot* of launching potential (and you should be able to launch as many fighters as possible in a single turn, as they lost much of their power otherwise). The only such use I can think of is during the early game, where Light Carriers double as effective warships, virtually on par with Light Cruisers. Putting some fighters from time to time may come out as a nasty surprise, especially if you have not been using any fighter for the Last thirty turns. Likewise, showing up a strong fighter component with a first offensive wave may catch an opponent unprepared.

The Last use of fighters as a hybrid weapon would be to secure a system from enemy colony ships, since they can be deployed from a newly colonised planet very quickly. Few players actually put PDC on their colony ships, so a handful of fighters can be enough to defend a wormhole in this initial stage of expansion. Most armed escorts also feature missiles rather than direct fire weaponry, and are also vulnerable to a defensive screen made up of a few fighters (or the same could happen with satellites launching seekers, though it isn't so common).

I hope I have kept rambling to a minium, and somewhat addressed your questions. As you can see, I do have the annoying tendency of getting carried away when speaking of my beloved fighters.