The Perfect fighter

Stone Mill · #1 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 · #2 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 · #3 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 · #4 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 · #5 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 · #6 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 · #7 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.