Fighters and Heavy Fighters

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was wondering if I should ignore sensors, life support, and defenses on my fighters and just go for engines and weapons. I'm not sure if this would make them more useless or would they work well like that? Just asking because I plan on going one more difficulty level up from challenging. What's everyone's take on fighters? (Tiny, small, and medium hulled ships)
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That is a good strat if you kill them in the first volly and you are the attacker. But beware if you are on defense... Its a good strat in the Beggining of the game, for nothing more then getting your Military Rating up higher to stop the AI from pouncing you in the first few turns.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't put any sensors on my tiny or small hulls. I use cargo based sensor ships for all my intelligence gathering. I do add 1-2 life support to them if I need a little extra range. Once you get into medium hulls and the middle game things change drastically and depend alot on the situation at the time. For the early game though I specialize my fleets.

Early game navy for me:

Fighter: 1 life support, 1 engine, rest into weapons. (small hull)
Interceptor: 1 life suppot, 1 Laser 5, rest into engines. (small hull)
Sensor ship: 2-3 life support, 1 engine, rest into sensors. (cargo hull)
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
for a 'defece' fighte i dont use sensors, life support or engines

i usually add 1 defence, rest weapons


why 1 defence? because it make them able to befit from star base defence, and can turn them into deadly ships

why no engines? coz they sit in orbit doing nothing 99% of time
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As for sensors, I find it's much cheaper and better to build one sensor ship to tag along with a group of fighters than have every fighter outfitted with sensors. Just keep it out of battle. Life support is different though. Consider where you are going to be fighting and add life support accordingly. If you're invading across the map, you'll want to plug some modules in, but if you're fighting on your home turf don't waste the room.

Defences wise, it all depends on the size of the ship, your opponent's power and what you're doing. The bigger the ship, the more you should consider defences because it's likely they'll be fighting big ships as well. If you can't kill something in one shot, you'll need to be able to take a few hits. If your opponent has big ships too, you've got to be able to defend against them. Having the right defences can turn the tide of a battle even if he's got better weapons than you. And of course, if you're playing defensively and probably won't get the initiative in most battles, use defences to let your ships strike back.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It is probably best to design one ship class which has sensors, and have it follow your fighters. The whole fleet will benefit from the sensors that one ship has, rather than sacrificing weapons/defense/speed to waste sensors on all of your fighters.

- Fragsworth
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As several folks have (essentially) said here it really depends on the circumstances. Generally I don't worry about sensors on fighters. I apply life support as needed depending on where I need the ships, and tend to always build my defensive forces with nothing but weapons and armor. Purely offensive ships work fine so long as you're the one attacking and you can wipe out the enemy in a volley or two. Generally, though, I've been most successful with a few points of offense and a point (or two, later) of defense customized as much as possible to the enemy's weapons and defenses.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Its a no brainer in the beginning. Lets see we can put in guns or defences but not both. For fighters at the most I'd ever put in is 1 pt. Behold the power of 1 (the square root of 1 is also 1 ) So you'll always have at least 1 pt. of defense. Problem is room for components. Fighters typically dont have much room. I put more defences on frigates/medium hulls.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my most recent game my first ship had a Laser (version 1) and the basic hull plating that you get from starship defenses. I put it on a Small hull and called it the "Flashlight". Heh.

That basic hull plating is pretty useless by itself, but my only intention when putting it on the ship was so I could take advantage of the defense assist modules on my military starbases. It worked, too. My I started my military bases with some missile defense assist and a couple beam weapon assists. Instantly my Flashlights were 3/0/0-0/3/0. The AI civ's ships were 0/2/0-0/0/0.

I ended up ignoring engines and life support on my warships throughout the entire game. I researched Warp Drive, but only for the intrinsic +1 speed bonus and +1 speed starbase module it provides. That left me more room for guns and defense. Also, everyone I fought was well within range of my ships. Sometimes they were at the limit, but that can be alleviated by the intrinsic range bonuses that life support tech provides.

Regarding defense systems, I found that they really helped. I pretty much always got the initiative, but I would rarely kill a ship outright after the first volley. The addition of one more gun wouldn't really have help, either, especially in the long run. Had I not used defenses, I would have been losing ships quite quickly, even if I won every battle. With defenses, the fights took longer, but I also took less damage and lost fewer ships.

Late in my last game, the Drengin took to putting a massive amount of defensive systems on their ships. I faced a bunch of battleships with a shield rating of 24 each and a mass damage rating of 12. Took forever to kill the things -- and those ships of mine were outfitted with shields and point defense. The reason why I could continue to win was because the Drengin went overboard on the defense, I always got the initiative, I had a massive tech advantage, and I had a maxed out military mine. Had he used some more balanced ships and reacted smarter to my approach, it certainly would not have been so easy, for me.