Small Afterburnner
 

I was looking at small fighter designs and I see no point in using the small AB. It takes the space of 2 engines while giving the same combat movment as 2 engines and NO movment in normal space. YOu are better off just putting the 2 engines on. The small fighter can handle up to 9 engines which only leaves enough room for 1 of the smallest weapons and a ECM or sensor. If you add the AB, you can't mount any weapons making the unit worthless.

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

at higher tech levels, the afterburner 3 generates 3 points of combat movement for 2KT. an engine only generates 1:1, so this gives you 2:3. you get one extra movement point and you get to scrap 2 engines. also looking at maximum tech, you spend 1/2 the minerals if you add an afterburner and scrap the two quantum engines, and you only expend 2 (TWO) units of radioactives. well worth it, if you ask me.

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Another minor point: IIRC Afterburners don't use supplies. (I am a work and only doing this from memory, so if I'm wrong, please correct me....)

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Actually, fighters with all engines, and no weapons ARE good for something.
Build a small amount on a planet. If the planet gets attacked, they get launched, and the attack ships chase after the fighters, ignoring the planet. The fighters run away as they have no weapons, and never get caught because they have lots of movement.
Doesn't always work, but if you get surprised, and don't have enough time to build a good defense, try it out. I've saved a number of planets this way.

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

I have never used them on small fighters myself, although Puke makes some good points about the resource usage. But they are certainly not useless for the medium or large fighters.

Geo

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Another use for such fighters would be decoys to draw PDC fire away from your missiles and armed fighters. Never tried it myself, just thought of it while reading this thread.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lupusman:
Actually, fighters with all engines, and no weapons ARE good for something.
Build a small amount on a planet. If the planet gets attacked, they get launched, and the attack ships chase after the fighters, ignoring the planet. The fighters run away as they have no weapons, and never get caught because they have lots of movement.
Doesn't always work, but if you get surprised, and don't have enough time to build a good defense, try it out. I've saved a number of planets this way.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Brilliant idea! I have to try this.

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Hehe. Clever! Was that on purpose or accident that you discovered that?

Another use I have for unarmed fighters is minesweeping.

If you can fleet them with ships, they could resupply ships that were out of supplies limping home.

PvK

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Sort of on purpose.
An AI player which I was friendly with suddenly decided to attack me. I usually blockade my warp points, but it already had a fleet in one of my loosely defended systems. I had a fleet a few turns away, and I didn't want two or three of my planets to get bLasted.
I just had to hold them off just a couple of turns, so I tested in the simulator all sorts of things that I could build in one or two turns, including platforms and fighters. Nothing was working, but I noticed that the enemy was going after my fighters first. And Voila!

Re: Small Afterburnner
 

Here's how I see the usefulness of Afterburners. It takes 2 engines to get one combat movement point, a 2:1 ratio. Afterburners make combat movement points so at the second level of afterburners they become quite useful. Afterburner 2 makes 2 combat movement points for 20 kt, that would require 4 engines to get the same amount of movement. So, I make my fighters so they have an odd amount of strategic movement points and an afterburner 2 or 3.

I can get 8 combat movement points using 7 Quantum engines and an afterburner 3 on a large fighter. Quite impressive, considering it still is tough to kill and can deal damage.