Fighters are broken. Can we fix them?

[Starhawk]

Ok, but when I'm putting fighters together over a planet, they mostly group together in a large force. How can I stop this? If I have a group of battleships, I set the formation and the tactics and have reasonable success. Again, its not fair to fighters that it is required to micromanage them to get them to work as designed, imho.

Dock them at planet then order the planet to launch fighters ONLY IN COMBAT and launch them in groups of 20.
It's not quite "Micromanagement" anymore then controling that many capital ships would be it's just that instead of 1 capship you get 1 fightersquad of 20 fighters. If you want booste it up to 50 but that's uber overkill with rocket packs.

I have alleviated this somewhat by trying to use my fighters with their carriers so the carriers will launch them in smaller groups. But again, not fair. if I want to launch 1000 fighters from a carrier group and have them rampage through a system, I should not be forced to micromanage them.

Yeah that's your problem buddy Fighters are NOT system conquering tools they are FLEET engagement tools, if you want to send them against a planet keep them IN the carrier until that carrier is attacking said planet. Don't launch the fighters beforehand as it also uses up supplies in shedloads and can get you fragged.

A fighter squad won't even be able to take on late game planetary defenses, yeah a thousand MIGHT be able to do it but you'd lose so many that sending in a capital ship fleet would be more effective, less time and resource consuming and cheaper.

Also, I hear what you are saying about "late game weapons should be able to destroy multiple fighters because of weapons advances, etc" and I disagree. The size of a weapon beam will never come close to the distances between objects in space. See "The Universe" in the Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy.

Fighters would still need to be "tightly packed" to effect a capital ship so a REAL warship firing a beam weapon into a squadron type formation SHOULD be able to do a "sweep" against the fighters thus destroying more then one at any time.

I still don't think damage should flow. you said that fighters cannot shoot more than one object (unfair) and that can't be fixed, can damage flow be fixed?

Not unfair, balanced if you had 1,000 fighters and it took 1,000 guns to beat them jack squat could stop you. Think of capital ships firing their guns at you as a "wash" effect over a squadron, ships would go BOOM in great numbers.
Also if you want to look at it this way think "AAA" in the form of pulsing the energy cannon against multiple fighters.

However you want to view it a cap ship killing only 1 fighter with EVERY shot is pathetic and unbalanced for that matter fighters in space is a stupid idea that will likely never happen for so many reasons it ain't funny Odds are they'd be more like large torpedo boats from WWII.

Thanks for the tactical help, I'll try to include more bombers than fighters. My next gripe though is how much they can carry... But I would be content to fix these 2 issues...

Can't fix what ain't broken You still need to realize that unless you play carrier battles mod FIGHTERS are not system conquest tools and nor should they be. Would you surrender to a fighter squadron? Uh no, for that matter most planets would have so much AAA fire a fighter FLEET would and should be toasted easily.

You don't like how much they carry lol the largest ones in Devnull carry FRIGATE level firepower if you put rocket pods on them

Heck design your own fighter if you want. But you still should realise that a capital ship should NEVER be beaten by less then a SWARM of fighters. And by swarm I mean several squadrons or a full carrier load.