Value of Fighters

[Stockman]

Are fighters worth the effort. I never use them and I got this way in the beginning of my ownership of this game months ago. I see that the AI uses them and 90% of the time I can knock them right out. They seem never to have enough firepower to be a strong force in the game. Need advice on if I am wrong and am missing out on good strategy? Thanks

[evader]

In SeIII they were good for planet Defense. But in SEIV you have wepons platforms for that. So in IV I am not sure how you'd use them

[Taqwus]

Well, you can build 'em on worlds without a spaceyard, put them towards the middle of a system, and then they can hit anything that enters. So if you have excess resources (!) you can add to a cheap-to-build, maintenance-free response force.

They're also nifty if you PPP a yard-less planet, or CI a colony ship in enemy space -- in either case, you can build fighters quite quickly, and they may be able to hit nearby worlds, intercept colony ships and transports, and so forth.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Blue Lord]

They're usefeulness depends on their numbers, weapons, size, speed etc. My own little killer, where 14 of these fellows can bomb out a dreadnought (in both tactical and strategical). I've got a strike force of them heading towards a neutral, on heavy carriers of course. The poor neutral won't know what hit them, when my Mine Nought mines the only warpoint leading to a neighbour that might aid them, and mu troop ships dive in. That's real fun.

[Instar]

A well designed fighter (large fighter, one or two small shields, plus a few weapons, and an afterburner III is really good) is an incredible weapon. With the Afterburner III + the engines, you can get some mighty fast fighters. I have designs that go up to 8 or 9 moves in combat. They are great interceptors. In a group, they can wallop small to medium ships, and if they carry missiles, they can blow anything up.
A good carrier with 100-150 fighters is one of the most important components of my fleets.

[Sinapus]

Yes, but the annoying thing about them is that they are a hassle to maneuver in tactical. Plus if you launch them outside of combat, they all form one big mass.

I'd like to see the 'launch fighters in Groups' command be useable outside of combat, as well as allowing a "fleet" to be preset for each carrier's fighters so that when you do launch them in small Groups they automatically are part of the "fleet" (think of it as a fighter group or wing) upon launch. Would make it much easier to move them on both the tactical and main game board.

Having the fighter Groups clump fighters of the same type in the same unit when you launch them would be nice as well. As of now I have separate carriers for different fighter types. Fighters w/rocket pods on one ship, fighters w/weapons that fire more often on another, etc.


------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[raynor]

Fighters are incredibly powerful if built in sufficient numbers. If the AI doesn't put point defence cannons on its ships, then you can build six small fighters equipped with just the small anti proton beam at any of your planets in a *single* turn and utterly destroy any escort, frigate, or light cruiser which the AI may spend two to three turns building at a space yard planet.

They don't need to be built at a space yard so it is easy to spend all your excess resources building up quite a stockpile of these things. I figure that the average system can build at least 40 per turn. There are just too many advantages to list. You didn't need to build a space yard to start producing these fighters so you can start producing them the same turn you colonize the planet instead of waiting five turns. They don't require any maintenance so you can spend more resources on expansion. They don't effect your score. So, you can have enough fighters to utterly lay waste to the AI and still seem harmless--thus not invoking MEE. Fighters can leave planet orbit and attack targets inside the system. This is something that satellites and weapon platforms and mines can't do. Pack them on a carrier or a transport if you have a planet in the next system over, and you now have a mobile offensive force. Fighters are better than satellites because they are always on the correct side of the planet. They are better than WEP's because they can go out and meet the enemy. 40 small fighters can easily take on a cruiser or battle cruiser and destroy it. Remember that small fighters are incredibly hard to hit while packing quite a wollop...

Later in the game, the AI will put Point Defence cannons on its ships. But if you play an EA-like game and mass produce fighters, you'll quickly find that even putting your fighters in much more manageable Groups of 20 or more, you will easily be able to defeat AI ships with PD V cannons by englobing his ships. It seems that the PD cannons don't fire if neither your fighters nor the enemy ships move?
Fighters are much more convenient to build than mines, satellites or weapon platforms because a planet can launch an infinite number per turn, and then you can move the fighters around inside a system without using another ship as is required by the other unit types.

As you can see, I'm a very big advocate of fighters. Even before I installed the Mod Pack and observed the numbers of fighters the EA builds, I found fighters to be extremely powerful. Of course, a human player could easily counter my fighters by building ships with *only* PD V's on board. But he'll spend one heck of a lot more resources on maintenance than I will.

IMHO, you would be extremely surprised at how effective just the small fighter is. Playing a high bonus game against the current AI, I think you could probably play a game where you never leave your current system and stop researching after you get the small fighter with the small anti-proton. Once you get that, I might make the ridiculous claim that you could declare war on all your enemies and survive. Of course, that might be a little extreme. However, I *was* at war with THREE empires at once and survived. (Hopefully, get rid of the defense base bug, and I would have been toast!)

(Stepping down off the podium and stopping the auto-salesmen like pitch of fighters...)

---
Notes for those of you who don't spend more time playing the game than you do reading this forum.

1. MEE - Once you reach a certain score, which is influenced heavily by the number of ships and bases you have, all races in the game decide you are a threat, break their treaties and declare war on you. The game is much easier to win if everybody *loves* you. With careful diplomacy, you can maintain peaceful relations with everyone in the galaxy until the turn before you start laying waste to their colonies.

2. EA - Earth Alliance - Awesome race created by Mephisto which you can find in the Mod Pack 1.01 over in the Scenarios/Mods forum which is up a level from this one and down a few.

[Tomgs]

I agree that fighters are very powerful if used correctly and it seems you do. I don't use them myself anymore because the micromanagement is very high with large numbers of fighters in combat and if you build a good infrastructure I don't think maintaince is a problem. Of course as you say if the computer building queue problems go away then this might change. Right now I can win without them so I usually ignore that tech. I do win against missle and fighter AI races that I meet in the game very easily and all it does is give me legendary ships from all the point defence hits I get.

So what I am saying is yes they are very good and against the computer they are probably unstoppable unless you mod the game to put more point defence in the ships. If you do that of course something else gets weaker so its a tradeoff. Against a human it won't work as well but you might win the first battles until his designs change sufficently to counter you. I Usually put at least 3 PD in any light cruiser and above when I fight seeker and fighter races and I don't think you could surround many of my fleeted ships with light fighters. My solo scouts however would die easily to that tactic. Of course large fighters with shields are able to take on larger ships and it takes a bit more to take them out. When I did use fighters I really liked the large fighters speed and in large enough Groups most ships would have trouble with them.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 12 February 2001).]

[raynor]

quote:

---

Against a human it won't work as well but you might win the first battles until his designs change sufficently to counter you. I Usually put at least 3 PD in any light cruiser and above when I fight seeker and fighter races and I don't think you could surround many of my fleeted ships with light fighters. My solo scouts however would die easily to that tactic.

---

In general, I agree with you. But because fighters don't pay maintenance, I wonder if it might not be a worthwhile sacrifice to lose tons and tons of fighters against point defence cannons rather than pay the maintenance on a fleet of ships.

For example, let's say you build a light cruiser equipped with PD V cannons and some shielding. In the simulator, this 7000 point ship can be overcome by 23,000 worth (about 75) small fighters. Is this trade worth it?

On the face of it, this trade looks pretty one-sided against the empire using fighters. But what happens to the balance if you consider the resources spent maintaining that ship. Over a period of 12 turns, the maintenance on that ship bumps its cost up above the cost of the fighters.

Of course, the next question would be: Can the fighter empire build enough fighters quickly enough--especially when he must spend three to four times as many minerals to equal one ship. It all depends on how long the other player has been maintaining his ships. I wonder if there might not be a point in time when it makes more sense to invest in fighters *even though* you are going to lose them in such large numbers against the enemy's PD cannons.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

[JSnider]

Use fghtrs, but more as 2ndry units to clean up after battle or pick off lone combatants that might sneak pass the front line .. still in general as originated in the game a fgthr (singleton) is useless. only good pt is can build 100s-1000s and not pay maint. don't like to use the englobe approach as seems somewhat unfair to take advantage of a minor prog bug ..
Have been considering mod'ng game to a certain extent to change individual fighters to rep squadrons or wings and scale up accordingly .. anyone else thinking of similar changes. this would allow me to build grps as 1 item deploy same accordingly and get rid of some of the micromanagement .. just wondering.

jsnider