Need help using fighters

[bearclaw]

I use a combination of fighters. Fast, cheap fighters with minimal weapons and shields to soak up PD fire with slightly slower, heavily armed fighters with shields. The fast buggers will reach PD range first, soak up most fire, then the heavy armed fighters typically can get close enough to deal their damage. As mentioned earlier, expect heavy casulties.

[Intimidator]

I tried once to design my fighters as fast as my missiles. So they where ariving at the enemy fleet roughly at the same time. That worked out pretty good....

If I'm playing tactical mode I always launch my fighter manualy in grooups of only 2 fighter.
In that it's easier to overwhelm the PDC defenses.

Intimidator

[primitive]

Fighting AI's is a bit different from fighting humans. The AI's basically composes their fleet of wathever is in their design file, without adapting to spesific threats. Most AI's bring a lot more PDC to the battles than an unecpecting human would normaly do, so fighters is not always usefull for major battles (unless you can bring a lot).

When you do use it for major Battles: Use shielded fighters as they can take a bit of pounding from PDC and the biggest stacks possible. Make sure their battlespeed is not larger (or max 1) than your ships and that your Carriers moves forward instead of running to the corner.

However, the best use of fighters is not in the major battles but for harassment. Have some big and fastmoving stacks available in border systems to pick of the lonley ships the AI tend to move around. Also, try to reconquer the warppoint with the fighters as soon as the AI leaves it. You can pick of lots of ships for free this way.