Well, thanks for the praises Turin Turambar, though they are likely a bit exaggerated (this was not the dedicated "praises to Alneyan" thread after all).
I gather you are referring to your thread at Spaceempires.net?
And obviously, I am not exactly the most able player out there, since the Crown is not resting upon my regal head (Asmala keeps the status of King of the Hill, among other such titles).
Back to the topic of fighters, I would like to make an addendum to my previous post. If you are serious about using fighters as a major component of your fleets (either for defence or specialised offensive purposes), you might wish to consider some of the racial traits. More specifically:
- The Organic trait gives a very cheap, and powerful fighter gun for dogfights (Small Electric Ray III if memory serves, at 20 damage for 3kt, and it uses organics rather than minerals).
- The Psychic trait has another good fighter weapon, the Small Telekinetic Projector. It is weaker and more expensive than the Organic own dogfight weapon though, but better than your average Small DUC III.
- The Temporal trait offers the Small Time Distortion Burst, slightly more expensive than the DUC III, but equivalent in all other fields. However, it should deal four times the usual damage to shielding, assuming this ability works correctly on fighters against ships (I have only played Temporal once, and I have not started a war yet in this game).
Still in the Temporal trait, the Event Predicator is also supposed to work on units as well as ships, which would make this facility a great addition to a fighter fleet. If it does work, it will bestow a hefty +30% bonus to offence (at level III) in the whole system, thus increasing the otherwise mediocre accuracy of your fighters. For the Religious ones, the War Shrine has the same use, though it is only half as efficient as the Event Predicator.
From what I read on these Boards, the Crystalline facility boosting shields in a system unfortunately does not work on fighters. A few tests ran in the past (under 1.84) did not show any effect from this facility for my fighters, but I would love to be wrong on this one.