[jim]

The answer use "shielded" fighters.

Alright, I've shown in an earlier thread that fighters can be tractor beams, well, now it looks like they screw up anti-shield weapons.

I had been puzzled by certain battle results (simultaneous replays) and tried some tests. It would appear that shield-equipped fighters are unaffected by anti-shield weapons. This is 1.49, so perhaps it's been fixed in Gold or Platinum, or whatever.

The problem, though, is really that the ships carrying anti-shield weapons are unaware of the inability and insist on wasting shot after shot of those type weapons on fighters, when their weapons would be quite effective on other targets.

And it can be worse than that!

If one sets a fleet on Max Range (say with Talisman), the anti-shield weapons (especially the accelerator) have a greater range than some of the anti-ship weapons. The result is that the ships get outside their anti-ship weapons range so that they can fire at fighters ineffectively with the anti-shield weapons.

It seems like the shields on the fighters act like extra structure but look like shields to shooters. This would explain why polaron beams do not work any better against shielded fighters than same power weapons, despite no phased shields for fighters.

So, as long as you can continue to send forward some "shielded" fighters, you will screw up your enemy if s/he uses anti-shield weapons. This is ESPECIALLY true if your foe does not use multiplex tracking (as erratic as it is). In the absence of multiplex, one must simply turn off fighter-targeting and hope PDC alone can do it, if one uses anti-shield weapons.