Fighters Severly Broken

[Iron Giant]

I have had the same thoughts. Fighters as they are now are almost worthless in the .99 demo.

Fighters should get a size bonus and you should only be able to target one at a time based on your MT rating.

I've built up HUGE squadrens of fighters just to see them torn up by a couple of light cruisers, who took no damage because when I moved 50 fighters in, they took an opportunity shot (even though it was my move) and wiped out the entire squad in ONE SHOT.

Fighters are almost worthless. I never build them unless there is absolutly nothing else to build...

[Rigelian Genocidal Maniac]

I've got to agree with Jubala on this; it must be a bug in the 0.99 code. Ships' weapons (non point defence) should be able to target fighters, but a hit should represent massive overkill on ONE fighter, not damage to the entire squadron. The old Starfire boardgame had (has) a good approach to this. Fighters basically had one 'hit', which destroyed them. The difficulty in hitting them was simulated by a separate to-hit chance (and range) for anti-fighter fire. Point-defence weapons had a good chance of hitting, ship-to-ship weapons generally a poor chance (wrong targetting systems). As far as multiplex tracking went, each level of Mx allowed you to target one squadron, but you could attack (individually) as many fighters in that squadrons as you had weapons ready to fire.
In Starfire, as in SE4, balancing fighters against 'conventional' ships was a major gameplay issue. SE4 introduces this problem earlier by having fighters as a relatively low-tech item.

Looking forward to the full game; I have been waiting for a workable computer implementation of a Starfire-like game for years. Keep up the good work Malfador!