Ship weapon loadout

[narf poit chez BOOM]

which is what i was bugging you about.

i have this urge to bug people who are overly serious to much. and you fit.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Just play a PBW game and you will see how fighters are nearly useless...

And yet, just this turn, an enemy brought a whole fleet of carriers and minor ships against me...

This should be interesting.

[primitive]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Just play a PBW game and you will see how fighters are nearly useless...

Another blanket statement Fyron

It’s time you get yourself back in the KOTH league, so we can teach you some creative use of fighters. There is nothing more fun than alternating fighter-heavy fleets with DF-fleets. There is also the added fun of watching your enemy guess if he should use the “Don’t fire at fighters” option and his targeting sequence. Whatever he chooses there is that special fighter design/fleet setup that will make his fleet look like Bambi on ice unless he has PDC to spare (Which is of course when you attack with DF-ships only )

Those 100 K researchpoints and some minerals invested in fighters early is probably one of the best investments available in any cut-throat game.

[geoschmo]

Hmmmm, I don't know Primitive. Not that I am wont to defend a blanket statment by Fyron , I would have to say this one comes as close to being correct as any I have seen him make.

I've been in a few Koth games, and have yet to see fighters be more then a minor nuisance. Easily countered without too much trouble. Of course I have seen cases where they were a factor, but in those cases I have always been of the opinion the mere presence of any enemy forces was the factor, ie controlling colonization of a system. That the fact that they were fighters was irrelevant, and that a couple of actual warships would have been just as much of a factor.

About the only thing I can see them good for is a temporary stop gap measure. You get to a system first and don't have time to build a space yard and to get a warship built, so you pump out some fighters and cover the warp points while you bring up some ships.

I guess that alone keeps them from being totally useless, but would still fit into a definition of "nearly useless", which is what he said anyway.

[Fyron]

I do not see why people are so concerned about me making alleged blanket statements. Everyone does so.

Primitive, as long as you do not do something stupid like stop using PDCs, you can definitely defeat all but the most massive hordes of fighters. But that requires being attacked by a much larger fleet of ships, which would probably slaughter you anyways if they had just used warships in the first place. Fighters can be useful in the extreme early game, before PDC becomes prevalent, but once you start putting a few higher level PDC on all your ships, fighters fall easily in large numbers. Hence, nearly useless. There are only a very small number of game situations in which fighters are not totally useless. KOTH play is not representative of SE4 PBW in general, because it generally forces at least some the combat to be occuring in those early stages of the game, before you can stick 2-3 PDC Vs on each warship without losing a significant amount of hull space.

[primitive]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I do not see why people are so concerned about me making alleged blanket statements. Everyone does so.

Not the way You do Fyron, You are the Champ.

Fighters are:
- Very usefull in very early game to block warppoints and take down lone Scouts, Raiders and Colonyships.
- Usefull in early scirmishes not because of their power, but because they force the enemy to keep their fleets together. Excellent as delaying tactics after that early breakthrough. Very few players will move to the next system with a few small stacks of fighters on the loose.
- Usefull again in mid/late games (if you can handle the micromanagement). Large fighters with Shields and Armor are almost imune to PDC and very hard to hit with ordinary weapons.

But the most important thing with fighters is their impact on the economics of the game. A small investment in research and the showing of a few hundred fighters early forces the other guy to go heavy on PDC. This will cost him much more than what you have invested in the fighters.
Small excample: Putting 1 extra PDC on a LC only costs 250 Mins. For a fleet of 100 (very common in KOTH) it adds up to 25 000. You also need about 10 more ships to get the same amount of offensive/defensive power, another 60-70 000. Then you have to pay maintanance throughout training, transport to the front and waiting for battle (lets say 10 turns on average), "oups" thats another 125 000 minerals.

To call fighters nearly useless is just plain wrong. It is one of the most usefull weapons in the game (after mines) if used properly. I would dare to say that if you don't find fighters usefull, you have never fought someone who knows how and when to use them, or you have never done the math on the economics.

Now for some real useless stuff: Satelittes and Weapon platforms

BTW: Missile ships can do most of the same thing fighters can, but at a greater cost.

BBTW:
Fun with fighters
Try this one in late game: Put 1-2 Fighterbays on each capital ship. Load with large fighters with Shields, Armor, ECM and Small Rocket Pods. Make sure the fighters have the same speed as the ships. Attack a fleet of equal size (this is especially fun in warppoint defence/offence). Depending on the other guys settings, two things can happen: A - He wastes a lot of shots from his main guns trying to hit the fighters or B - your fighters will get through and do some real damage. Cool thing (for the fighter guy) is that there is no smart defensive settings (I know of). If he let his main guns fire at the fighters he wastes a lot of firepower firing on small stacks (I have seen 20 shots from PPB5s fired at 2 fighters), If he chooses the "do not fire on fighters" option he is very vulnerable to a "real" fighter attack next time. Do NOT try this against the Talisman

[Fyron]

Not the way You do Fyron, You are the Champ.

Yeah, whatever.

I have faced numerous opponents making good use of fighters, and have never lost more than token battles against them.

If you look back at my post, you will see that I directly refered to them being useful in the very early game, which is most of what you described. In the rest of the vast majority of game situations, they are not useful except as distractions.

125k minerals is a turn or two of production, though hardly a relevant figure because it gets paid over a long period of time. The amount of resources invested to get the fighters and carriers strong enough to actually require extra PDC easily match or outweigh that figure. Their effects on economics are trivial at best, except in the very early game, which rarely has wars that will lead to your victory overall, except in the small percent of MP games that are just 1 v 1 affairs.

Late game fighters are most certainly not virtually immune to PDC fire. Late game fleets have huge numbers of ships, and PDC Vs have good range, allowing for a lot of ships to stack their firing ranges over single squares, resulting in lots and lots of PDC shooting down fighters (not as fast as low tech fighters, but still fast enough) before the fighters ever get a chance to fire.

Again, I will state that fighters are nearly useless. You may think that phrase equates to a lower degree of usefulness than I do, but that is not my fault.