Are fighters worth it

[AHappyBadger]

Im still quite new to the game. I was wondering if ship carriers are worth it. From what I read online the fighters were generaly weak but got a few buffs. So are they worth using late game or should i just stick with full tachyon battleships

[Nightmyre]

Depends on your definition of "worth it", and on what difficulty / crisis strength you're playing on.

Generally, other than the end-game crisis and possibly the awakening of empires, you can do anything you want and it will work just fine.

As for those two events - for both, you're going to want fleets that focus on killing without getting damaged. The problem with fighters is they're largely short-range. They might work, but you'll end up losing ships, and against those endgame crisis, you can't really afford that. So what you want is long-range ships with weapons that will let you avoid having to actually deal with a counter-attack.

[Red Earth]

That's strange. If avoiding losses is the goal I'd think fighters would be ideal as they're supposed to be expendable and allow the mother ship to keep its distance. If the thing fighters are intended for is actually a bad time to use them than I'd say fighters are not good at all.

[Slynx Jewel]

they are weaker and require masses to be effective else they are shut down by point-def.
and they had a weird balance (where amoebas and basic scouts were almost the best you can have)

but i still use them from time to time cuz they look awesome in combat(i even used a mod that gave titan a hangar slots to replicate a mothership). also against AI it usually balance things out cuz ai's designs and strength is usually weaker then human's.

also i've heard that they are good on defensive platforms early game.

my favorite design in 2.2 was Cruiser with missile front, hangar and a bunch or laser-kinetic-pd in the rest slots.

[Slynx Jewel]

@red thing is - enemy will still target the main ship(and they'll eventually enter CQC even with new computers). and when you'll loose it - all fighters will die too.
and i'm afraid that other options are usually just more effective

[galadon3]

Yepp, they seem at least to have fixed the bug where the fighters flew into nowhere and kept circling there, so they work, but other loadouts are still more effective then using hangars.

[Gustuv Wynd]

I can second that they are good on bastion stations. Especially if you have trade routes near by.

Though they aren't bad on ships. I will use all battleship fleets once I research that far, but I seed in a few ships with hanger sections so I can have some point defense. The AI seems to almost always have point defense on the builds, but the fighters still seem to do alright. I've even tried full fleets of the carrier types and I still win with them...battle takes a little longer, though.

[Nightmyre]

The point isn't whether or not they can work. They work fine against AI opponents, and you could probably even get them to work against awakened empires. But especially at higher crisis strengths, they simply won't work against endgame crisis. You can't fight an attrition war against those, they spawn fleets too quickly. So you need to win battles without taking any losses ideally, or at worst very minimal losses, and fighter-based fleets just don't offer that possibility.