Fighters are broken. Can we fix them?

[Starhawk]

Fyron "preconception" has nothing to do with it, have you ever considered what I pointed out about the fact that most planets would be so riddled with AAA cannons that fighters would get dusted?

Let's face it a Fighter in and of its self is not something that can ever conquer a system, for that you need indurance and FIREPOWER which fighters lack, how many hours of bombardment would it take for fighters to seriously hurt a planet? Especially a planet with shields and defense platforms (even basic ones).

Now I know your saying "1,000 fighters" consider that against a planet with 8-10 or God forbid a sphereworld with 64 BILLION people do you know how fast those 1,000 puny fighters would get destroyed?

Also since I think a great many players and even a lot of AI have fighter squadrons guarding their worlds you'd have to deal with attrition, sending in your 1,000 fighters against maybe my 100 (per planet) but say my 100 get the drop (I.e get to firing range first) and open up with repeated direct hits, I could very well kill 200+ of your fighters in that one pass.

Now add a weapons platform with their extreme ranges and heavier damage weapons and odds are you'd lose about 500 fighters before getting to the planet.

Now use 100 capital ships you'd probobly lose 10 or even possibly 20 but you'd be in weapons range of both the fighters and the planet sooner and be able to destroy the planet's defenses in a matter of battle turns instead of GAME turns.


Fyron the only way to conquer a system with fighters is if it's a poorly defended frontier system that the guy doesn't much care about protecting in the first place.

Fighters are good in large scale fleet battles supporting capital ships, I can't stress that point enough that you NEED capital ships to be there in most versions of SEIV (including mods) having entire fleets of fighters is rather expensive, time consuming and in the end foolish. Especially because if I get my dreadnought in firing range of your carrier before you can launch any large number of fighters I can blow up HUNDREDS of fighters without them ever leaving their mothership.

I know I sound like one of those old naval 'big guns are best' admirals but in space Big ships would be best just about every way you hack it, fighters or fighter like ships would be too small and have to little fuel and to light of weapons to be of any great risk to capital ships in RL.

The only REAL reason Fighters today have such an advantage is that they can move in three dimensions while ships can only move in two, take that advantage away and the fighters not be so important anymore. I mean if we ever got a flying ship (not saying space saying FLYING) that did not rely on helium or some such explosive material and with decent PD you'd probobly be seeing a steady decline in fighter usage.