Hi,
first post here.
Some months ago I finished the campaign at normal difficulty with Federation and I began a new campaign, advanced level, this time choosing Rebels.
My first fleets were cruelly destroyed by tons of enemy fighters! I soon realized that I have to develop a strategy against them.
At the end of a typical battle against a fighters heavy fleet, if all goes well, I have several squadrons of captured laser fighters.
Usually those fighters perform poorly in the next battles, above all if they have to fight against other fighters.
I guess that there is something wrong about their orders: could you give me some suggestions about some good set of orders in order to enhance their performance against other fighters?
Usually I gave the Cooperative and Cautious (4%) orders, sometimes they Escort (set at 300) an antifighters cruiser.
The range order how influences their performance?
Usually I didn’t build any laser fighters, Rebels are usually better of captured one, but they die so quickly!
If I won’t find a good tactic, I think that I’ll scrap the captured fighters 
My guess is that there are not enough of them to matter.
I mean, you fight Battle A and say capture <10% of their stuff.
Assuming battle B is the same size, you have 100% of your stuff, plus <10% captured stuff, vs 100% of their stuff.
You can’t expect the 10% captured resources to have that significant of an effect relative to the main fleet… especially since the existence of the captured stuff contributes to a bigger enemy fleet if parked adjacent to that system for a while.
Fighters are also more or less effective depending on several variables:
A 2.0 speed fighter might be awesome en-masse against your fleet. But send it against 3.5 speed rocket fighters attacking your big ships and they won’t be able to hit anything. Hence they will appear to be worthless.
Or maybe those 3.5speed captured rocket fighters fly way ahead of your main 2.2 speed fighters and thus get slaughtered by the enemy’s tractor beams and defensive fighters before your slower fighters even arrive. Thus ending in a Defeat in Detail. Your own fighters would have all arrived at the same time and not given them free reign to shoot up 10% of your fleet.
I usually just do what you do, and set em to Escort one of my bigger frontline ships. That lets them help beat enemy fighters, and even provide some close-range firepower vs frigates that get really close.
Thanks for your reply!
Usually destroying enemy frigates and cruisers, I managed to capture more than 10% of the enemy fighters.
Anyway you are right, my fighters are almost always outnumbered and despite my efforts they perform as “cannon fodder”
With my previous post, I was looking for orders that could help to mitigate the problem.
The resources in an advanced campaign are so tight that I fear I’ll scrap them.
If I want to keey enemy fighters busy some engine-only lure fighters with range orders set to 2000 can make the job done at a reasonable cost.
Usually I keep the captured rocket fighters, they chew enemy frigates in a very efficient way!
The maintenance costs are fairly low. So I’d keep em and just escort one of your ships. They might not do much but its still a lot of extra laser cannons pointed at the enemy… and a lot less lucky-shots against your cruiser/frigate’s hull.
Even though they will normally lose the fight, they should last a while, right? So consider adding some tractor beams to your main ships. Ive found that even a small force of laser fighters that are escorting my main cruisers do much much better with 1 tractor on each cruiser. Tractor = free kill every 8 seconds or so, and you don’t have to rely on 1 of your cruisers using their pulse laser on the slowed fighter.
Of course if you already have a dedicated anti-fighter solution that is fine but I find that to be kind of expensive unless its a Tank that is already part of your strategy. I haven’t tried the empty decoy fighter trick…I thought they would ignore em if they had no weapon unless they have nothing else to shoot at. But they were listed in 123’s guide so they must be legit.
In any case, you are doing better than I am. Game is impossible on normal and advanced because it crashes so much. Anytime I LOAD a campaign, all my worlds get bum-rushed REGARDLESS of the threat level. If that happens every few turns due to crashes, I can’t really keep up with all their free fleets spammed my way. So I use Unity, Union, and other mod-races to compensate somewhat.
Yes, it’s true the maintenance costs are low, but scrapping them I can earn some money.
At their best captured laser fighters are “cannon fodder”.
I’ll try to increase the number of tractor beams in my fleets.
Fighters are dangerous against strong cruisers only if they reach a “critical mass”; thanks to the very fast decoys, enemy fighters don’t attack all at once.
In my experience the main reason of campaign crashes is an old (and so far unfixed) known bug.
Look here:
http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6120
A simple workaround is to make sure that that first fleet in a planet is the strongest one.
I just got a HUGE LOL!
I had never thought to create a fighter ‘bait’ fighter before. So I built a fighter with a 4.5 speed and a single laser (gotta love Union). I gave the fighter 100% engage orders versus fighters (1% on everything else) but set the range at 2000. I stuck it at the extreme edge of the battle with my cruisers at the other end.
Sure enough, all the enemy fighters made a bee line straight towards the bait (as well as the frigates apparently). What got seriously funny was the way that single fighter had a gargantuan mass of the enemy fighters strung out behind it as it sipped all over the map, including on a few occasions right ‘through’ the mass (when it got cornered). On several occasions the enemy fighter mass passed near to my cruisers who would of course take pot shots as they passed. However after my cruisers finished off the enemy ships, virtually the whole of the enemy fighter force wound up captured.
I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to have lots of luck against fighters by simply putting one or two dedicated anti-fighter cruisers in my 100% cruiser fleets. Load them up with defense lasers and two tractors and boom, no more fighters. Using fighters (even good ones) just means you lose some each fight.
(I will admit, part of me’s hoping that you have gone up against my FT’s :D)
So, just came back to GSB after a long break, and found the campaign…
exactly as i left it. By that i mean that my FT spams’ still dominate everything i’ve found. 8 squads of FT are a strong fleet. Make that 40+, and they’re basically unstoppable.
Even against an equal credit cruiser fleet, that many FT have the advantage of being able to whittle the total firepower of the enemy MUCH faster.
May I ask what FT stand for?
Fighter Torpedo?
Frigate Tribe?
Thanks!
FT = Fighter(s)
FR = Frigate(s)
CR = Cruiser(s)
Correct me if i’m wrong.
Have you bumped into any Parasites yet? With that expansion I can completely ignore enemy fighter spams and leave my fighter fleets in worlds with no shields and zero cruisers.
As for dealing with enemy fighter spams I have found they usually invariable chase around my decoy fighters allowing laser fighters to maul any cruiser/frigates.
Berny
Itchy
I haven’t yet. Don’t have the expansion, it’s not on STEAM yet xD
And i found a good solution to the whole decoy issue. My dual laser fighters are for killing CR mostly. But depending on what i want to capture (yes, i DO use FT fleets to guarantee a capture :D) i may change priority to FR. However, i prefer rocket/painter ft for killing other fighters.