yes but currently the number needed is so high that you'd crash the server before you ever came close to actually fighting. not saying a fighter should be able to take down a battleship, but it should be able to Atleast make a dent. I'm just saying let's bring shield dmg absorbtion down to 60%, for argument sake. then allow chambers to boost it up to like 95% max damage reduction. a fighter still won't take down a battleship, but it could chip away at turrets and at least contribute to something other than being a distraction swarm.
Is it really that high? ive seen some peoples "fighters" and they are the size of my corvetters(some hundred meters in length or more). and those can pack quite a punch.
Really thats all a fighter should be when it comes to that scale this isnt the real world, where fighters are 9 times smaller than a destroyer, but can carry enough firepower to actively destroy one.
ive posted elsewhere, fighters and bombers do not work in most space games, its almost entirely impossible to balance a game around them. They are either to weak(Homeworld for example), or to strong(Sins of a solar empire for example).
Combat *should* be balanced around ships of the same size however, not small vs alarge, which i would argue it is currently, so long as no exploits are used and the ships are around the same mass. I will argue to the end of days that a fighter should not be able to penetrate a battleships shields ever, with the standard weapons, theres a way already that they can penetrate shields of larger ships, its just not effective, and i would love to see it so.
if warheads where balanced there would be no need for this discussion, because you could make torpedos that a fighter could carry that would actually do something(and i mean *do* something, other than the small amount of damage they do now), and be threatening to a large ship, as such weapons(missiles, torpedoes, bombs etc) are IRL, and in engagement, the larger ships turrets are more than likely going to be aimed at another larger ship, or multiple smaller ones, allowing such weapons to be deployed. Edit: this would allow for fighters to be used as escort ships to prevent bombers from doing such things.