Two Hardpoint Fighters Work?

I was under the impression that a two-hardpoint fighters gave two weapons for the single hardpoint. Essentially double the DPS. However, I’ve been doing some testing and it appears a single hardpoint and a two-hardpoint are the same. Am I wrong? I can’t find a forum post which clears up my confusion.

  1. To clear up terminology, “hardpoint” is usually used in reference to the slot for weapon modules, while “turret” refers to the weapon icon drawn on the hull. While fighter hulls do not have turrets drawn on them, I will still refer to a hardpoint which has multiple lines coming from it as a “multi-turret hardpoint”, as multiple turrets will be drawn on the ship hull if a weapon is placed in that hardpoint. Or, at any rate, that is how I refer to things.

  2. Assuming that you meant a multi-turret hardpoint as defined above, then no, you do not gain any extra damage this way. This is true for all classes of ship, not just fighters. The only difference between multi-turret and single-turret hardpoints are the number of turrets drawn, the firing animation for bullet weapons (like Cruiser Lasers), and the firing graphic for beams. You do not gain any extra damage from such hardpoints, nor do you incur any increased costs (crew, power, or credit).

  3. Assuming you meant a fighter hull with multiple hardpoints (such as the Federation Leopard Fighter, which can have a Fighter Rocket and a Fighter Target Painter on the same design), these do allow you to design fighters with greater firepower. However, this is not always advantageous as two-weapon fighters are generally slower and more expensive than fighters which carry only a single weapon. These fighters can be built to have twice the potential DPS of a single-weapon fighter, but usually fare less well in dogfights against other fighters, and are also more vulnerable to frigate and cruiser anti-fighter weapons than their single-weapon equivalents.

Fighter designs which commonly make use of multiple hardpoints are anti-frigate rocket fighters (either two fighter rockets, or one fighter rocket and one fighter target painter), and rocket-armed dogfighters (one fighter rocket and one fighter target painter, or mixed groups of rocket/rocket and rocket/painter or rocket/rocket and painter fighters). Somewhat less common are fighter designs for strafing cruisers which use paired fighter lasers or fighter pulse lasers. There are also occasional laser/torpedo fighters (some of which can be seen in a few of the scenarios), which I can only imagine were hoped to help defend themselves. I have occasionally made use of torpedo/torpedo and torpedo/painter fighters, though I think such fighters are rather uncommon, mainly because of how slow and easily destroyed they are.

Yea you got my drift and thanks for clearing up the confusion.

As for fighter specialization, I’m not sold on rockets being the preferred anti-fighter unless you encountered armored, i.e. slower, fighters but I’ll keep playing to confirm that.

I think you might have either misinterpreted my post, or picked up something somewhere else. Rockets are the preferred weapon for cheap fighters, and for anti-frigate fighters. Rockets in combination with target painters are excellent anti-frigate weapons, and perform acceptably well as dogfighters (roughly on par with laser fighters), but are not useful against cruisers unless something else is around to take down the shields and break the armor. Squadrons of rocket fighters can be good for dealing finishing blows to crippled enemy cruisers, though, especially if you want your own heavy ships to move on to more threatening targets once a ship is disabled.

It really depends on what you want your fighters to do, though, as to what weapon is best for the anti-fighter role. If you want something to kill fighters, then you want either laser fighters, or rocket fighters supported by target painters (either a rocket/painter twin weapon fighter, or mixed rocket fighters and painter fighters - I’d suggest 1 painter fighter per four rocket fighters as a starting point if you separate painters and rockets). If you just want to distract enemy fighters, then rocket fighters are usually best since they are usually a lot faster than any other type of fighter, which tends to make them much more survivable.