Troops are useless

[se5a]

I don't think fighters give happiness.

[Suicide Junkie]

Why not make troops able to pile on heavy armor, while fighters can't afford the weight.

[Q]

Or make fighter weapons unable to target troops.

[RCCCL]

Q said:
Or make fighter weapons unable to target troops.

That would push the advantage to far in the other direction, especially since the AI tends to keep a number of fighters in cargo, which are then used in ground combat.

Someone might try creating an AntiAircraft weapon, ie: only targets fighters, with higher damage.

I don't know if it will work though, because I think in ground combat the targeting is a little off. Weaponplatforms will often have DUCs or Laser weapons that should target fighters, but only their point defense weapons fire during ground combat.

[Phoenix-D]

That's because ground combat gets a separate damage line, and space-based DUCs can't fire during ground combat.

[RCCCL]

I see, so a AA type weapon for troops should work.

[GuyOfDoom]

A point worth noting is that the Weapon's Platforms listed above were equipped with 2x Point Defense Cannons Lvl 4 and 2x Anti-Proton Beams lvl 2.

I think it should be changed such that fighters are only good for space combat or at least are incapable of planet capture without troops.

[Fyron]

You can make such a change in your local copy (preferably in a mod folder, such as copying the file into the "GameTypes\Standard SE5" folder), by editing VehicleUnitTypes.txt.