Did they ever fix fighters?

[A British Bank isrun w Precision]

I played a fair amount pre 1.0. I know fighters got a really big nerf in 2.0 and were considered unusable. Was this ever fixed? Are they still trash??

If so, are there any mods that fix this?

[Trent]

I never played before 2.0 but I've had good results with fighters and use them to defend my stations when the warships are elsewhere.
It might be different on the hardest difficulty but on whatever the one above normal is called, they work.

[🦊 Hermit]

Funny you should say fighters were nerfed in 2.0...the patch notes for the update also stated that fighters used to be very OP before then as well.

But myself, I never saw it - at all. Before 2.0 I tried fighters a bit, and every time I sent them out they did practically no damage, were wiped out in seconds, and were frankly utterly useless. Not to mention finding pilots to replace my lost ones after every single battle was a pain. I gave up trying with them very quickly.

However after the 2,0 update they seem much more combat effective in my experience, and now that they are controlled remotely and do not lose pilots they're a lot more cost and time effective too. I wouldn't have said that 2.0 nerfed them, rather I'd have said it actually made them somewhat useful, where before they were nothing but waste and frustration.

[A British Bank isrun w Precision]

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

Funny you should say fighters were nerfed in 2.0...the patch notes for the update also stated that fighters used to be very OP before then as well.

But myself, I never saw it - at all. Before 2.0 I tried fighters a bit, and every time I sent them out they did practically no damage, were wiped out in seconds, and were frankly utterly useless. Not to mention finding pilots to replace my lost ones after every single battle was a pain. I gave up trying with them very quickly.

However after the 2,0 update they seem much more combat effective in my experience, and now that they are controlled remotely and do not lose pilots they're a lot more cost and time effective too. I wouldn't have said that 2.0 nerfed them, rather I'd have said it actually made them somewhat useful, where before they were nothing but waste and frustration.

Ah I hope this is the case! I'm looking forward to using them. I've heard the range cap is pretty bad though at 3.5 km. Is that still the case?

[liberator65853]

Originally posted by A British Bank isrun w Precision:

Originally posted by 🦊 Hermit:

Funny you should say fighters were nerfed in 2.0...the patch notes for the update also stated that fighters used to be very OP before then as well.

But myself, I never saw it - at all. Before 2.0 I tried fighters a bit, and every time I sent them out they did practically no damage, were wiped out in seconds, and were frankly utterly useless. Not to mention finding pilots to replace my lost ones after every single battle was a pain. I gave up trying with them very quickly.

However after the 2,0 update they seem much more combat effective in my experience, and now that they are controlled remotely and do not lose pilots they're a lot more cost and time effective too. I wouldn't have said that 2.0 nerfed them, rather I'd have said it actually made them somewhat useful, where before they were nothing but waste and frustration.

Ah I hope this is the case! I'm looking forward to using them. I've heard the range cap is pretty bad though at 3.5 km. Is that still the case?

It is. There is a mod that makes their maximum range 9km depending on the turret you use for them. I use it and highly recommend it if you don't like the 3.5km range

[rickcarson]

My understanding is that pre-2.0 there was basically an 'exploit' where you would make fighters from stuff like long-range railguns or seeker missiles, and basically evaporate the enemy from over 20km away. (So their anti-fighter defenses never had a chance).

I find that in 2.0 fighters are _slightly_ OP, until you run into something with a defence against them and then they basically all evaporate and you lose 20+ hours down the drain.

The 'solution' for that is to have dozens of stations all beavering away building fighters I guess.

Also the guy making all the videos (Qwertie?) suggests that 1500hp is a good minimum. Which might be an indication that ogonite is the preferred/best material for fighters???

-------

So they've gone from useless unless you know this one trick, to okay unless your enemies know this one trick.

Eh.

[Trent]

Out of curiosity - what difficulty are you playing on? I've encountered enemies that kill my fighters but never a complete wipe out.
Part of it might be that I have multiple ships with 40+ fighters each. They kill before they are killed. DPS and a mix of shield and hull busting seems to do the job.
I use stations to fill my ships initially (new ship or better fighters) but the ships' own production keeps up with losses.

[Naked Granny]

More than anything else in the game, fighters are either worse than nothing or decently effective and it depends only upon the type of weapon used to create them.

They need some numbers tweaking still. Before 2.0 they were exploitable to abuse certain types of turrets you could use to produce them, and it was silly and not intentional. After 2.0 they're excruciatingly situational and way **WAY** too expensive for what they do, and they need to function at longer ranges / faster speeds and the docking / retrieval behavior needs improvement still.

Combat in general suffers from a lack of tactical options. For example, EVE has E-War gameplay involving various methods of debilitating a target, but Avorion really only has "uber turrets versus everything else is trash not worth equipping" still.

The thing fighters are good at which turrets can never match is to perform mining operations for a slow cargo barge. Navigating in asteroid fields can be tedious and the AI often gets extremely slowed down / confused by overly cautious navigation trying to avoid collisions. This means that a mining barge sufficiently large to scoop a decent-sized system will be slow and cumbersome no matter what you do (which is how things should be!) and therefor should use fighters to do the mining while it concentrates on navigating through the environment. This strategy will reduce your time spent mining a given asteroid field by roughly 20 - 30% depending on density, which is a very significant increase in throughput. Asteroids don't try to evade and don't try to shoot back. So mining fighters basically get their full theoretical maximum effectiveness at the task.

Until the combat design and fighters get another iteration, fighters basically are worthless trash not worth the expense or tedium of managing them - until you have absolutely giga-maxxed everything else on your largest ships. At that point, fighters might contribute a percent or two of extra damage before they're wiped out, and money at post-end-game is literally infinite from the dozens of systems you have on auto-production, so why not.

[rickcarson]

Originally posted by Trent:

Out of curiosity - what difficulty are you playing on? I've encountered enemies that kill my fighters but never a complete wipe out.
Part of it might be that I have multiple ships with 40+ fighters each. They kill before they are killed. DPS and a mix of shield and hull busting seems to do the job.
I use stations to fill my ships initially (new ship or better fighters) but the ships' own production keeps up with losses.

Veteran