From Server Patch Oct 26 [ viewtopic.php?f=11&t=48169 ]

* Fixed issue with St. Bernard Fighters using their super item.

They were changing shapes and firing heat.. This was unwanted by the player base.

So, you want St. Bernard fighters to use their secondary, when there is already a concept for an ADF fighter for FC's?

The fix for St. Bernard's wasn't to prevent fighters from using super items, it was that we changed their hull from a Kelvin which has a super item to a new one that doesn't. Fighters will use any super item that they come with, they just don't currently come with anything right now.

I'm not really sure right now which fighters might be underpowered and which ones might be overpowered, but adding super items to underpowered fighters would definitely be interesting.

I am going to go ahead and say that no fighters are OP. Some might be very balanced but none are OP. This can be very easily observed by the fact that FC can obtain much better sustainable DPS from Selen/Scrupling slaves using just onboard weapons rather then EFBC slaves using fighters.

During my EFBC phase I tested all available fighters with the exception of one: the t19 bana fighter.

In general I concluded that:
(1)
Fighters are fragile things, unless you've got one or two cerberus fighters launched a MF bigger green will probably one-hit them.
(2)
They miss a lot. Give some selens a set of SBG pulse weapons and they'll have a rather decent hit rate; do the same with space blue delta fighters and they'll miss consistently, doing less overall damage per second than cerberus/beam wielding fighters (applies to everything I have used).
(3)
Ignoring the fact that fighters miss a lot fighters do inferior dps when compared with a set of shrimp (etc) slaves. Sustainability doesn't really aid their cause as they are either too weak to tank (most of them) or do no real dps. Meanwhile the player ship takes a beating.

Before I finish hijacking this topic I'd like to suggest that smaller fighters avoid the collision code, whilst larger (possibly designed more to tank) fighters are not exempt.

Changing the thread title and first post is NOT allowed D=
~Preter

I have to agree. Costs vary widely for fighters and most are not nearly as useful as a well augged pair of selen/scrupling/shrimps even in swarms.

Some are stupidly expensive and should either make a pack of fighters or have their requirements changed and/or stats boosted, such as panther kitten fighters. Which cant tank an aggressive sea sponge mad with rage and miss all the damn time with those idiotic ppaws.

xD

Just a fine balance. Increasing their strength to much would make them op on EFBC for sure. I think the answer would be to increase their survivability/flight time and decreasing their energy cost/size.

Would you guys like it if their size was decreased a little bit and it was changed so rather than blowing up(usually), they just lose the pilot, and return to your ship? So rather than losing a lot of expensive fighters, you lose a Pilot(new commodity that costs a few mil, maybe?)

Blowing up is fine. Not all fighters blow up, and if they do, you are either unlucky, or you have slaves that launch fragile fighters that - lets face it - a slave normally wouldn't blink an eye before launching a panther kitten on Grim Reaver...

I do agree on lowering their size tho. My next big project is to look into fleet commander again, making setups around fighters (now that panther kittens have auras - hurrah!) but also around purely using slaves. The main issue I found with the fighter part, was the size of the fighters, and the ability to only launch what I would call proper fighters these days, from Earthforce Battlecruisers. Of course a Zeus Throne is godlike for a Fleet Commander for launching fighters, but I still believe in a revamp of fighters in general soon.

Not even Jey is using fighters these days, maybe that says a bit!