Swarms of small fighters versus captial ships

In my experience the small ships lose their value in the era of large & huge capital ships. While I really like the idea of using swarms of fighters rather than a couple of big ships, I tend to have two problems with that.
1) I can't fit enough ships into a fleet to make it feasible. The numbers always end up working against me, my large & huge fleets always end up with just better offense & defense numbers.
2) Inevitably I lose ships in these battles, which means I have to bring up re-enforcements from my core planets after every battle. Capital ships don't have this problem.

Small fighters lose against cap ships becasue, not like other space games fighters can kill caps becasue they take to long to turn and fire the ships in the game can fire at ships behind them if a weopion was put on the top/below/behind the ship. A cap ship with lets say 50 atk points can kill a swarm of 12 fighters if there atk is lower than theres and if they dont have good def.

Hi!

Once I start hitting medium or larger hulls do small/tiny become obsolete or are they still a viable choice

I'd say until firepower is not several times bigger as the hitpoints of the hulls, they are useless. But in late game, where a huge hull with 100-200 hitpoints can have and attack of 500, then it's pointless building ships with expensive defenses. Just an unlucky roll with them, and the 10000 BC investment is gone. At that time the swarms with only weapons and engines would be more cost-effective, esp. when a single ship can only kill one ship per battle turn.

However none of my games got to max tech, not even close, so I may be wong.
BR, Iztok

My 2 cents. It depends. I find that for assult far away from home its cap ships all the way, since they are less likely to get blown up. Near home however, i usually have at least 2 military starbases, which give boosts to each of those fighters in a fleet indivitually. and the ships are easy to replace.

It depends on economy also. The small ships can be cranked out in a turn or two with any economy, but a good capitol ship can take four or five even with a monster planet working on it. The fact is, if a fleet of caps get taken out, you had better e ready to spend a lot of money buying new ones, otherwise you likely won't have time to rebuild.

But if you lose a fleet of 10-12 small fighters, you can rebuild it in a turn or two with out any problem, even if you're planets aren't the best producers.

I prefer caps, but they both work well.

I ALWAYS keep my fleets of small fighters neabry military starbases. 18 of those being boosted can always defeat a fleet of 4-5 Huges. Each Huge can fire at one ship. So thats means 4 Huges can kill 4 ships on the first firing. 18 Smalls can fire 18 times per round. 18 small versus 4 Huge nets you 4 firings on EACH Huge, and with a decent main weapon, and again, the military starbase boost well outweighs getting rid of them.

Just how it has worked out for me so far anyhow

I generally build fleets composed of 1 or 2 capital ships (only weaponry) and then the rest Tiny fighters (one weapon + lots of defense). In any fight, only the capital ships are targeted, but since I have so much defense from the fighters they're rarely destroyed or injured severely (then I simply replace the ship), and the rest of my fighters level up.

It's very effective for me. The tiny fighters also double as the standard planetary defense (keeps maintenance low and can be cranked out quickly) and also my fleets are that much more effective when under the influence of one of my military starbases.

I prefer this organization (2 capital ships + 12 fighters @ 43 logistics) over an equivalent fleet of capital ships (5 capital ships).

Capital ships all the time - there should really be no argument.

Back that up with at least *something*, Frookie.

Also, under that organization it costs your fleet much less when you want to break a ship off to garrison a newly conquered planet against Transport rushes.

What i find is that fighters are popular and great in the early game of tiny, small and medium hulls. When large rolls along and weapons tech advance fighters lose their potency for a while. However with advance weaponry fighters can become deadly. My "doom fighters" were tiny hulls, with an engine and a single doom ray and they kicked ass because i could mass produce them, the drengin capital ships, far more powerful and well defended simply couldn't cope with waves of doom fighters hehe. However you can't beat a good old fashioned battle of caps with masses of weaponrty and defence having a big battle. I sometimes use fighters as a support role, particularly if i don't have enough caps, they are easy to mass produce cannon fodder that can still deal a good punch. They can also be used as a last ditch defence but if thats the case you've probably lost the game anyways and are delaying the inevitable.

I usually phase out tiny and small in favor of the larger ships. I don't like to lose ships, even though tossing them at the enemy in swarms can be quite effective, I like leveling my ships up. I've had a fleet of mediums that reached level 68 and had 91 HP each I think (also had xinathium plating), it was great. Another perk of the larger ships is that you can fit more engines on them and they can still be very powerful so they can move multiple sectors in a single turn.

I also haven't had any games last until anywhere near end game techs though and those doom rays and black hole weapons are very small. I would think that those kinds of techs would in fact push the power back to the smaller ships since weaponry potential will greatly out pace the unreliable defense available.

About the highest I've had is photon torps. Does anyone else think that they move far too slowly? I ended up turning the battle speed up to 5-10x and would watch the small vessels fly circles around them as they travelled in what seemed like the opposite direction, but then the ship would fly over to meet it and BOOM. That must take a crazy combo of stupid pilots and incredible guidence mechanisms they have on those to predict where the ship will be that far in advance.

My Cap ships are near max tech in my current normal game. The opposition has had no luck in destroying even one.

Each has over 100 attack and about 50-80 defence.
My Fighters, which I have two models of, are equivelent of my enemies CApitol ships in defence and firepower.
I have a fleet of 17 fighters, each with two Doomrays. They have lost exactly zero units.

I have another one which has about 75 attack(1 doomray), and about 20 defence on mass drivers and missiles.

These stats are heavily modded by buildings and military recource starbases.

The enemy's have only equaled my fighters in defence and offence. But never my capitol ships, and my capitol ships often take on fleets of enemy mediums and larges without being destroyed.

My Fighters often kill enemy apitol ships in 1-2 shots.

I am really surprised anyone is arguing on the side of capital ships.

Lets assume both sides are equaly advanced in techs.
Lets say producing 1 capital ship requires the same amount of production as, just a wild guess, 10 fighters.

Battle begins, lets let the cap ship go first. It can only destroy one fighter, no matter its awesome firepower rating. 9 fighters return fire. Bye bye capital ship.

End result, you sacked a fighter to kill a capital ship.

One other tip: Ignore defence, until they change the mechanics of it a LOT, it is useless. Engines are by far more important as they determine whether the capital ship gets to take out 1 fighter, or if the capital ship just gets blown away with no chance to even shoot back.

I find it is good to have a handfull of fighters around to fill in gaps in logistics. It sucks to have a capship fleet that has logistic points left. A fighter or 2 can maximize your fleet's FULL potential. At least until the next logistics bump...

Small ships can be more powerful then capital ships if and only if you make full use of military starbases.

Lets assume both sides are equaly advanced in techs. Lets say producing 1 capital ship requires the same amount of production as, just a wild guess, 10 fighters. Battle begins, lets let the cap ship go first. It can only destroy one fighter, no matter its awesome firepower rating. 9 fighters return fire. Bye bye capital ship.

A well designed capital ship will have more defense then the fighter has attack. The fighters will on average not even scratch the capital ship.

What you say is only true when you only use weapons and frankly, a capital ship only needs enough attack to destroy a target in one or two hits. The rest should go to defense.

One other tip: Ignore defence, until they change the mechanics of it a LOT, it is useless. Engines are by far more important as they determine whether the capital ship gets to take out 1 fighter, or if the capital ship just gets blown away with no chance to even shoot back.

You don't see the point of having near-invulnerable ships that gain incredible hit points due to never dying?

Different play styles, really. I'd never say that defense is useless, ever.

That only works if you're an idiot. Due to the space thing, larger ships can have more defence - it shouldn't be hard to make capital ships that can walk through the fire from smaller ships. I build two classes of caps: one loaded with defence, and one more balanced. The tactical AI often wastes it's time firing for no damage at the defence ship, while my other ships return fire. Defence isn't useless - indeed, at the start of the game defence=2 means that ship can easily kill a dozen ships of the same size. I'm sure we've all seen whole battles where the enemy scored at best a 1-point hit.

EDIT - obviously, this is directed at Trespasser.

One other tip: Ignore defence, until they change the mechanics of it a LOT, it is useless. Engines are by far more important as they determine whether the capital ship gets to take out 1 fighter, or if the capital ship just gets blown away with no chance to even shoot back.

My Tip: Don't ignore defense on big ships. A big hull has enough room to load up on guns and still have plenty of room for armor. In another thread, a player saw the AI using huge ships with 40 shield, which were virtually immune to any number of 10-15 beam attack tiny ships. A tiny or small ship just can't pack enough punch to get past that kind of defense without some extreme luck, no matter how many you build.

I do see the capital ship argument and they are the better type of ship, they're meant to be the backbone of your advanced fleet. I just don't dismiss fighters my doom ray fighters packed 20 something attack (without military starbas) and were far cheaper than building caps with similar weaponry, a fleet of them would attack and do significant damage to a fleet of caps. For example a battle of 9 of my fighters vs 3 Large hulled Drengin ships with 9 defence each for lazers but an awful lot of firepower. That firepower went to waste, they could take one of my fighters out but in the first combat of the battle the collective firepower of my fighters took out one cap and damaged another. I won the battle with 6 fighters left (2 were destroyed by Drengin ships initial shots, then 2 more were taken out by the last drengin ship) , the batlle cost me several hundred BC (in terms of replacing ships) compared to thousands it would take to replace the caps. Its things like that which can win wars. Plus fleet with both caps and fighters in look cooler in battles.

I've settled on medium hulls as the best trade-off between potency of the individual ships, and the number I can fit in a fleet. I emphasize fleet speed (maintaining about double the AI's base fleet speed) so I can stay out of the way of enemy fleets that are strong enough to hurt me, while pouncing on the less formidable ones. I don't use ship defenses, and strive to get my logistics as high as possible. All of these factors combined allows me to decimate the targets I choose to engage, often taking out more than half their firepower before they even get the chance to fire back, in classic "the best defense is a good offense" style.

I can't say if these tactics will work in all circumstances, but I'm currently handily winning a game vs. eight opponents, huge map, suicidal difficulty, using strictly military means and nothing I consider even vaguely cheesy - no military starbases, no flipping planets with influence, no schmoozing them with diplomacy skills - just good ol' xenophobic conquest (I'm playing the Daleks, after all).

For sheer speed of mobilizing an army, small and tiny ships are great. Thus, I'd say if you find yourself in an unexpected war, swarms of fighters will be your best friend. However, if you're the aggressor, you'll find the capital ships to be a powerful front line. For reinforcements, though, I'd crank out both. Let your smaller planets work on developing fighter fleets while the capital ships get built at your big yards.

Also keep in mind orbital assaults- if it's a matter of using a fleet of tiny ships or a capital ship, and you can take your opponent with the fleet, do it. You can split the fleet to go after individual ships, or take on the whole group if they come at you as a group. That frees up the captial ship to deal with other, more deadly targets.

I have two worlds that I use to just crank out capitol ships, I can crank out my best ones in about 3-7 turns.

The rest of my civilization doesn't have that manufacturing potential and cranks out fighters at 3-20 turns apiece depending on the planet.

If I put my best caps into a fleet(I never do cause one cap ship can easily destroy an entire enemy fleet right now with little damage, so I keep my fleet spread out and flexible) they would make quick work of my fighter fleet.

The bigger ships are for defence, even at late game. I remember one battle I was losing, the enemy had some high level fleets with Black Hole guns, and just blew up everything. I designed a ship (I spent an hour on it making it the best looking ship I've ever made to date) with massive hull, and LOTS of defence. I could only afford to build one, so I sent it out.

One ship, against 4 level 20 fleets. Powerful fleets, of small/medium ships.

There were a lot of close battles, but I wiped out all the fleets with one ship, and went on to crush them. Huge hulls are designed for defence, but I'll admit had they got the same level of miniturisation I had (they were 2 techs behind) then they would have wiped me out.

To sum: Properly used, small ships own.

Properly used, all ships own.

Thinking it over more, I'd say the further you get in the game, the less useful defense gets for smaller ships.

For example, early game. You manage to fit 1 of each of the +1 defenses on a fighter, and add in a couple Laser Vs. So you're at 2 Damage, 3 Defense, 9 HP. Your opponent maanges to fit 5 Laser Vs. 5 Damage, 0 Defense, 9 HP.

Odds are pretty good that the ship with Defense will win- just because the Defense will stop most incoming attacks. Meanwhile the 5 Damage ship will likely take damage every time.

Now let's scale that up to the other end of the spectrum. I have a pair of Black Hole Eruptors, you have two Aereon Missile Defenses. That's 50 vs 40. Still on the tiny hulls. The amount of damage that's likely to get through is going to rip apart the defensive ship.

If you have 9 HP and 2 damage gets through, you'll survive. If you have 9 HP and 10 damage gets through, you're toast.

Thus, as the weaponry moves up the scale, it becomes less and less feasible to bother with defenses on your smaller ship classes. Meanwhile your capital ships are going to still get the full benefit- because 10 damage against 150 HP is a cut, not an evisceration.

In the late game I'd guess that the old saying about the best defense is a good offense does come into play (regardless of what certain robots tell you), because the only way that the smaller classes of ships will have an effect is hitting fast and hard, before their target can strike back.

Course, big enough ships will strike back regardless. And then it's no fun to be a fighter pilot anymore...

sometimes use fighters as a support role, particularly if i don't have enough caps, they are easy to mass produce cannon fodder that can still deal a good punch.

Ditto. Tiny ships are good for cannon fodder.