Fighter Fear

[nosyone]

Scenareo: I'm playing the rebels and a HUGE buckethead (or imperial as some call them) fleet consisting of mostly star destroyers, some carracks and some dreadnaughts moves in on a lightly defended system defended by five Y-Wing squadrons or so. I give orders and automatically the fleet turns around and leaves. I'm thinking it's a recon fleet. several hundred days later, an improved but still recognizable fleet- fleet ten (the first fleet) jumps in on 5 Y, X, and A-wing sqadrons. Same thing. Research 9, 8 b-wing squadrons added. A HUGE Fleet 10 jumps in, with lancers, skrikes, more SDs, everything. it ran like the wind. I don't know why this happened or why it never happened again. Oh, well. I'm not complaining!

[R2-Opus2]

I know what you mean about using fighters as fear.

 

In all my games, and this is true of the Imp side's fighters too...I always make all class if fighter including the "obsolete" Y, X, TIE and TIE bomber.

 

If those are mixed in liberally with your TIE Defenders and B-Wings, you can have yourself some decent fighter garrisons in place.

 

Ever since I noticed the AI tends to go after the most advanced fighter first, that's when I knew I'd still be making the others too.

 

In my current game, fighters are real inexpensive on both sides, 1 cost and 1 maintenance pts The AI builds fighter detachments well for fleet deployment, but this way it also encourages it to have more on its own systems too. My typical garrison of starfighters is 48 of each type with a doubling up of the TIE Bomber if I'm Imp to augment the TIE Def ships, and same if I'm reb using Y's to bolster the Bs.

 

With my HQ system or if its Coruscant (and any planet set for it to fall back to if need be), I add each class in larger chunks (100 or so at each order so I don't have to check that yard too often). Most of the time, the fighters alone will force a fleet to retreat, freeing up my home fleet if I want to use it.

 

On other key planets devoted to nothing but ship building (with mine usually I add at least 1 troop yard), I set those up as ambush planets should an enemy fleet stop by, ususally just the fighter groups plus 1 interdictor. Planets with construction yards I can risk loosing, but without ship building at one of those planets along with at least one training facility, I couldn't take any of those worlds back.

[teukros]

When I'm playing the Rebs I start out building Y-Wings (in my game the X-Wing is not available at game start but the construction and maintenance costs of the Y-Wing are reduced by one each) and then switch over to X-Wings as soon as they become available for large scale production. I don't bother with the B-Wing or A-Wing at all. The B-Wing is a big fat sitting duck (even with shields pumped up to 15 ) and the A-Wing rocks, no question, it's a sweet little space superiority starfighter - but my starfighters MUST have proton torpedoes! If I were playing against a human opponent I'm sure I would be forced to build A-Wings to counter his TIE Defenders, but against the computer, the X-Wing Starfighter can dance with the TIE Interceptor any day of the week, thankyouverymuch.

[Ragnar]

Hm..

 

I'm a little confused by all this. First off, people seem to be building Y-wings because they aint got nuthing better, but to be honest, the Y-wing (and tie bomber) is one of the best fighters in the game.

 

Sure, it sucks in fighter2fighter combat, but they excell at fighter vs capital ship combat. To make fighters so cheap (cost/maint all 1) is somewhat obscene. 6 Y-wings will be able to beat down almost ANY capital ship on their own, fighting it 6v1. Just try it.

 

So what I usually do is I build as many Tie-bombers or Y-wings as I can. I only build other things to protect or transport the Y-wings or to blow up the ones the enemy might have. In a fight, I send the Y-wings out to blow up the enemy laser-ships first, then I mop up the remaining enemy fighters, then I start offing SD's. A good commander can speed things up by as much as 30-50%.

 

This is why you should always scout out enemy systems before sending a fleet. A large fighter garrison can really ruin your day.

[R2-Opus2]

Yea I know I went cheap on the fighter maintenance and costs, but I had to decide wether to make the AIs fighters cheap or some of their cap ships cheap in my current session. I once made everything dirt cheap on both sides which meant that every battle was of an epic scale. That's great if you've got a good computer, but if not crank up all the costs to keep battles smaller but moving better.

 

With my current system though, tactical mode was a slide show when I made everything cheap like that. It didn't matter if I had any characters with good leadership taking part.

[Sith_Lord]

Well it happens to me a lot that there are huge fleets (I play on hard settings)

 

But it is possible to repel fleets with only starfighters.

 

SOme ships don't have laser batteries only turbolasers, wich aren't able to shoot fighters as good as lasers.

 

If you have these ships against you, you should be able to repel those attacks

[teukros]

I'm a little confused by all this. First off, people seem to be building Y-wings because they aint got nuthing better, but to be honest, the Y-wing (and tie bomber) is one of the best fighters in the game.

 

So I just posted over in the "Damned Corellian Corvettes" thread:

 

"The Y-Wing is a very underrated fighter-bomber. Its maneuverability is just one less than the X-Wing's (4 instead of 5) and it packs a considerable punch. It can't dance with the T.I.E. Interceptor (maneuverability EIGHT) but then again, that's not what it was designed for."

 

But, the two games X-Wing and TIE Fighter left me with a deep prejudice against the Y-Wing. In X-Wing if you're flying a Y-Wing it is against impossible odds (overheard many times while I was playing the game: "I hate Y-wings!") In TIE Fighter the only time you see the Y-Wing is when it is attacking your capital ships, platforms etc. in HUGE numbers (overheard many times while I was playing that game: "I hate Y-wings!")

 

The T.I.E. Bomber on the other hand... is a flying coffin...

 

 

 

This is why you should always scout out enemy systems before sending a fleet. A large fighter garrison can really ruin your day.

 

Dude, this is how I'm using my Y-Wing Starfighter squadrons. All 113 of them. Before I have a fleet liberate a system (through bombardment - gotta love it) I make sure that the Y-Wings are stationed in the closest friendly system. The second the system is liberated I send the Y-Wings there and they provide more than an adequate defense while the GenCores are being built and any loose diplomatic ends are being tied up.