The Perfect fighter

Ruatha · #1 December 18th, 2002, 07:09 PM

I have large fighter tech, My opponent has medium fighters.
But he is organic.
He has Elecric Discharge 3 on them.
He's medium fighters take out my large fighters easily, I can't seem to build a good fighter.
Wich components should I have.
Do shield and armour give any effects on fighters, they don't take much damage even with shields.
What weapon should I have, I made some with rocket pods but they are destroyed by fighters before they even get close to the enemy ship.
I've tried adding ECM and Scanners.
With 10 jacketed photon engines and afterburner I can outrun his fighters if we're not coming head on, but I wan't to killthem!

Help!!

Desdinova · #2 December 18th, 2002, 07:28 PM

the electric discharge has a range of 3, IIRC. that will make it hard for you to get things within range b4 you will be attacked.

edit: and a damage of 20 pts. that will be hard to beat. at least there is no small organic armor or you would have an even harder time. i play organic myself and i really enjoy this advantage.

edit edit: sorry i cant offer you any advise on this.

[ December 18, 2002, 17:33: Message edited by: desdinova ]

DarkHorse · #3 December 18th, 2002, 08:04 PM

There really is no perfect fighter. It depends on whom you are fighting at the time, and how they design their fighters/ships.

When I have organics, I like to make about half my fighters with one rocket pod and one electric discharge, so if they only get a chance to shoot once, they can make it count. The other half will be all electric discharge; if they survive long enough they will out damage the rocket pods. You just have to watch the combats to see how long your fighters are Lasting, then design accordingly.

Organic tech does make the best fighters, so to combat them try adding more PDF's to your fleet to shoot them down.

Ship mounted Phased-Polaron Beams can knock out fighters fairly handily also, especially since fighters don't get phased shields. PPBs are just the best all around weapon in the game, IMHO.

You could try using anti-fighter drones as well; they might make a cheap PDF platform, and they use regular size components (armor/shields) as well. I haven't tried this yet, but maybe I will...

Stone Mill · #4 December 18th, 2002, 08:28 PM

Ruatha,

Your opponent has the strongest fighter design.

Rocket pods reach max strength with Missiles III. Adding shields/armor will help, but it sounds like his fighter stacks are bigger than yours. Increasing the stack may help some fighters getting through.

As was stated, PDC are the way to go for killing fighters. Kills Bugs Dead!

What is remarkable to me is that you actually have large fighters! ...and you are fighting other fighters with your fighters!

This seems like a rarity to me. By that time in the game (the research investment to get to large fighters), it seems like ships/fleets would be so awesome, fighters would be a mere distraction.

For me, Fighters:
Early game - very useful
Mid game - useful until PDC becomes common
Late Game - very rare

Atrocities · #5 December 18th, 2002, 08:35 PM

I have to agree with Stone Mill. Fighters after a certain point in the game simply are no longer practical. Your better off researching PDC, than fighters. Keep them away from your ships, and use your heavy armored ships to take out their carriers. Most of the time the AI carriers have no armorment and are easily destroyed even by ships as small as Escorts.

Puke · #6 December 18th, 2002, 08:44 PM

temporal makes good fighters too.

one of my favorite se4 moments was a fighter duel between planets in a jointly colonized system, when fleets were too far away to be distracted by the conflict. ships would have taken too long to build, and this was a pre-gold game. I lost almost all of my colonies, but held the system after the dust settled.

DarkHorse · #7 December 18th, 2002, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Atrocities:
I have to agree with Stone Mill. Fighters after a certain point in the game simply are no longer practical. Your better off researching PDC, than fighters. Keep them away from your ships, and use your heavy armored ships to take out their carriers. Most of the time the AI carriers have no armorment and are easily destroyed even by ships as small as Escorts.

If the game limits the number of ships you can have, as is the case in a PBW game I'm playing currently, then fighters certainly are useful

EDIT: Fighters also make good warp point defenses against AIs that send drones through unaccompanied. Since warhead-only drones can't target fighters -> turkey shoot.

[ December 18, 2002, 18:54: Message edited by: DarkHorse ]

Ruatha · #8 December 18th, 2002, 08:50 PM

I have level 5 PDC, but he has massive amounts of fighters, several hundreds I guess (I counted more then 370 of them). He annihilated afleet with ships from destroyers up to severeal battleships, they had PPB's and level 5 PDC.
I took out his capital ships but his carriers and fighters won the day, most of his carriers got away unharmed. I had no ships left (a ship fleet, mainly Big ships with Null space projectors and PPB, with shields mucho PDC)!
The fleet cost me 120 000 minerals/turn + mucho rads, My allies held me up by gifting minerals each turn as I couldn't afford the maintnance myself.
So I'm quite pleased in away that it's destroyed.

[ December 18, 2002, 18:57: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Arkcon · #9 December 18th, 2002, 08:50 PM

A long time ago someone suggested interceptors and bombers -- fighters with targeting strategy set to target other fighters or planets respectively.

Interceptors are useful against other fighters, they whittle down the group by arriving first before ships with PDC. Your fast fighters are just what you need here.

But the fact is, fighters swarm like flies, and die like them too, you will need masses of them. Your interceptors will be cut down by point defense.

I also like interceptors for sats mounting the WMG and missle sats. They are defenceless. And I'm not gonna waste my top of the line battle cruiser agains a mass of null cannon sats.

[ December 18, 2002, 18:53: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

DarkHorse · #10 December 18th, 2002, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ruatha:
I have level 5 PDC, but he has massive amounts of fighters, several hudnreds. He annihilated afleet with ships from destroyers up to severeal battleships, they had PPB's and level 5 PDC.
I took out his capital ships but his carriers and fighters won the day, most of his carriers got away unharmed. I had no ships left (a ship fleet, mainly Big ships with Null space projectors and PPB, with shields mucho PDC)!
The fleet cost me 120 000 minerals/turn + mucho rads, My allies held me up by gifting minerals each turn as I couldn't afford the maintnance myself.
So I'm quite pleased in away that it's destroyed.

If your ships are ignoring fighters at their peril, you can also rearrange your targetting priorities in the strategies section.