Fighter group size

[DaftWager]

They’re in the data mod section!

I haven’t play tested them as much as I would have liked, so let me know if they work as promised. From what little testing I’ve done, (30-45 battles) they seem to do ok.

One more thing, I don’t think they work with saved empire files (didn’t for me anyway) I hope it’s not a problem.

[dogscoff]

I see your point when fighting crtain armour types, but are you sure large Groups are better against PDC than small ones? If playing tactical I prefer to launch fightrs in small Groups, or even one at a time.

Think about it - if a PDC (or any other weapon) does 50 damage, and each fighter takes 30 damage, 20 of that damage is wasted against a single fighter, but all 50 is used against a group:

In other words it would take 9 hits to destroy 9 single fighters, but only 6 hits to waste 9 groupd fighters.




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There is an exception to every rule. Including this one.

[Nitram Draw]

That's a good strategy if you don't mind moving all those units. You could actually use un-armed/armored fighters as flak catchers.

[Q]

quote:

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Originally posted by dogscoff:
I see your point when fighting crtain armour types, but are you sure large Groups are better against PDC than small ones? If playing tactical I prefer to launch fightrs in small Groups, or even one at a time.

Think about it - if a PDC (or any other weapon) does 50 damage, and each fighter takes 30 damage, 20 of that damage is wasted against a single fighter, but all 50 is used against a group:

In other words it would take 9 hits to destroy 9 single fighters, but only 6 hits to waste 9 groupd fighters.

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You are correct in this point, but there is no fighter group launch possibility of one, so you would have to do this manually!! And I don't want to think about the time it takes to move and fire all these sigle fighters.

[nerfman]

If you have shields on your fighters, then smaller Groups may help. Damage applied to your Groups to one fighters shield then to the fighters themselves. If there is enough extra damage to destroy 2 or three fighters then it does so, not "attacking" the shields of the other 2-3. Subsequent attacks on the next turn will have the shields for say the forth fighter. Basically, once you burn through one fighters shields, all the rest of the damage is applied internally and damage that leaks to other fighters does not interact with their shields.

With this in mind, smaller sizes mean more of this "extra' damage is wasted. Also, by increasing the number of targets, you diminish your opponents ability to engage you with their normal weapons. Even w/ multiplex tracking, they can only engage a few targets regardless of size. This works even better when closing w/ heavy ships simultaniously. Of course the point defense will not really be affected since it is autonomous but timing with some standoff missile strikes can really force the same type of targetting delema on the PD guns. Saturation is key!

So my suggestion is if your enemy is killing most of your fighters with standard weapons then break up your Groups, but maybe if they are heavily armored or have lots of PD then jack up the group size.

[nerfman]

double post sorry

[This message has been edited by nerfman (edited 17 April 2001).]