Fighters & Bombers

[jayman]

Yes, I'm still playing this game after all these years, using the DWUR/Bacon mod combo.

I have a question, does anyone use fighters and bombers? I experimented with them in early games but I play as human and tend to put phasers and missiles on my ships and use ship-boarding as a tactic, so by the time fighters and bombers got into the fight it was practically over. Capturing enemy ships and retiring them helps with getting research, and refitting them to my designs is a good way of building-up my fleets.

As a result of this philosophy I've stopped using fighters as the space is better used for marines, sensors, ECM, shields, armour or more weapons. I haven't used carriers for the same reason, as I find a 1 battleship/2 cruiser/4 light cruiser/8 destroyer fleet much more flexible. The BB and CA's take out the bigger ships/bases while the CL's and DD's take care of the escorts. Yes, I manually control my battles! Luckily I have a 64-bit 2.3GHz processor with 8GB ram so it can handle that with very little slowdown, except for a little stuttering during explosions. I don't know what it would be like with hundreds of ships in a battle though!

Fighters and bombers ARE useful on bases like resorts or science stations for self-defence against pirate escorts though (1 hanger bay of each), but as with the ships my starbases and spaceports are loaded with longer-range weapons.

What is your philosophy if you're a fighter user?