How big is your *******

[Briaireous]

Haha, quick question....


What size do you guys typically make a fighter?

 

[DukeofRealms]

Ship core + another player sitting on top with a pistol.

 

[Briaireous]

Ship core + another player sitting on top with a pistol.

Dang, that's compact

 

[DrTarDIS]

He probably has the other player using the PistolOP though.

 

[Coyote27]

I've made a good number of "fighter"-sized ships before, but never with the intent of using them as fighters. Usually as scouts, light packet transports, or other utility purposes.

I did make a ~600 mass microcorvette in the past and use it for combat, but I wouldn't really consider it a fighter per se as it wasn't built for agility or speed at all. More of a compact clunky gunboat for very minimal resources because I had yet to figure out how to make good factory systems or miners.

 

[Edymnion]

My current gen fighter is precisely 40m long (38 if you don't count the pipe and light bar decorations on the nose). Smaller than that and you're more in drone territory, IMO. If its going to be a legit fighter, it needs some manner of cockpit and room for decent weapons, armor, and shields.

Basically, for me, the difference between a drone and an actual fighter is the fighter has to be something a human would want to fly. If a human wouldn't want to fly it because it goes down in one shot, IMO its really just a drone with an accessible core.

 

[Coasterrider1]

form the time i played my fighters are usealy small but combining it with AI's mostly

 

[Briaireous]

My current gen fighter is precisely 40m long (38 if you don't count the pipe and light bar decorations on the nose). Smaller than that and you're more in drone territory, IMO. If its going to be a legit fighter, it needs some manner of cockpit and room for decent weapons, armor, and shields.

Basically, for me, the difference between a drone and an actual fighter is the fighter has to be something a human would want to fly. If a human wouldn't want to fly it because it goes down in one shot, IMO its really just a drone with an accessible core.

Man, that's a nice pic u got there

 

[Edymnion]

Man, that's a nice pic u got there

Thanks. I've been trying to break out of the "gotta go big to make it look good" mentality and focusing on smaller ships.

I still have some relatively large ones, but my biggest ships these days only weigh in at around 300m, tops. Big enough to be impressive, but small enough as to not be server breaking or irreplaceable.

 

[Nosajimiki]

The MD-16 Komoto is about 2k mass. It might be considered more of a gunship than a proper fighter since I never use carriers anymore, but they come 24 to a rack, and generally follow the same doctrine as what more people would use fighters for.

 

[JinM]

The MD-16 Komoto is about 2k mass. It might be considered more of a gunship than a proper fighter since I never use carriers anymore, but they come 24 to a rack, and generally follow the same doctrine as what more people would use fighters for.
View attachment 49441

looks really nice

 

[MossyStone48]

I'll use 50^3 built by others as fighters so I build docks for them but most of mine fit in 30^3 save for the multirole or superiority subclases. those get as big as needed to do the job but rarely go over 50 meters in any direction.

these two are my smallest. the starseed maxed out the 11^3 of the old unenhanced docks and could down an isanth-6 but looked like a mini borg cube with fenders. the jackel replaced it and in a squad of 3 could chase off a wing of 5 isanth-0s.

 

[Edymnion]

Looks like we got us a fighter porn thread!

Of course, how big a fighter (or even a drone) is will depend entirely on what you expect it to do. Harrier (mostly there just to bug and annoy the other person) will be much smaller and faster than what amounts to a self propelled heavy cannon designed to chew through half a dozen blocks of armor per shot.

 

[MrGrey1]

For me a fighter is anything with a size 19 reactor in it. This was my latest experiment with the new power system though it needs adjusting for new weapons. Size 19 reactor with 6 dimensions and approximately 1reactor : 1stabilizer ratio with as much gun and thrust as it can handle built as compactly as I could manage.


Edit: woops, meant to have thrusters open and not shields... oh well. Got thrust of 2 and all coloured blocks are Advanced.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

depends on their role and what version we are at now. Every major update I build them bigger. I remember the glory days when my fighters were like >20m in all directions. With power 2.0 they are at least <40m with some models I project to reach 50m-60m in size depending of course on their role.
My gen VI Agni fighter, soon to be released after weapons 3.0 is out, is nearly twice the size of the last version

The next iteration of the Perun is roughly 3x the size of the last released version.

 

[Ixalite]

My own fighter habits draw from Homeworld: they are basically the same scale and shape as fighter jets, with the addition of occasional airfoils and "flat" control surfaces for nebulae or atmospheric flight.

Their combat role is as scouts, mobile point defense, and (sadly) as distractions. Keeping enemy shields in an "under fire" state is often worth the resource requirements of having a fighter or two, and I have experimented with dedicated carriers. I think that if the "new" ai can handle basic bombing with the new bombs, I will put in the effort and complete the Goblin (the scale replica of the Higaran fleet carrier from Homeworld. Being able to field fleets of 50-100 light craft may possibly be the answer to enemy capital ships, at least if the bombs really do ignore shields. Making a carrier was frankly waiting on having an option for a mobile shipyard, to be able to build ships inside the carrier, but if bombers are viable, I think i'll try it.

The following is a large lump of my fighters.

Spoiler: pictures

Tru-craft Condor:
Rail based landing gear, canopy.
Light weapons
10 block reactor

EDF-F1
Old system

EDF-Light fighter
Rail based canopy, folding wings.

Higaran Interceptor
Rail based canopy (on a swivel, never do them this way, it sucks)

 

[Edymnion]

Making a carrier was frankly waiting on having an option for a mobile shipyard, to be able to build ships inside the carrier

Just a tip, you can start making your carrier now and build everything up, and just use something really easy to find and replace for the shipyard blocks. Like pink hull.

It'll let you spend your weeks/months/etc building the perfect carrier now, and then as soon as shipyards on capital ships becomes a thing, you can just use advanced build mode to find/replace all the pink hull with shipyard arms and you'll be ready to rumble on day 1.

This is also a good tactic for generic builds that you customize later. Make your reactor, then use weird colored hull for the chambers. Then, when you need to specialize it, just find/replace the hull blocks with the reactor chambers you want. Same goes for weapons.

Find/Replace is an often overlooked tool that makes building special purpose ships from templates much easier.

 

[Nosajimiki]

FYI, last I checked, Schema mentioned not having any intention of making bombs AI usable. He added them in response to a need for lesser players needing to be able to stand up to larger threats with special tactics, not as something to encourage AI spam.

If you want a good drone weapon, try arc beams. They do massive damage for their size, they are AI friendly, and swarms of small fast attack ships should be able to actually close the distance necessary to focus fire with them.

 

[Briaireous]

My own fighter habits draw from Homeworld: they are basically the same scale and shape as fighter jets, with the addition of occasional airfoils and "flat" control surfaces for nebulae or atmospheric flight.

Their combat role is as scouts, mobile point defense, and (sadly) as distractions. Keeping enemy shields in an "under fire" state is often worth the resource requirements of having a fighter or two, and I have experimented with dedicated carriers. I think that if the "new" ai can handle basic bombing with the new bombs, I will put in the effort and complete the Goblin (the scale replica of the Higaran fleet carrier from Homeworld. Being able to field fleets of 50-100 light craft may possibly be the answer to enemy capital ships, at least if the bombs really do ignore shields. Making a carrier was frankly waiting on having an option for a mobile shipyard, to be able to build ships inside the carrier, but if bombers are viable, I think i'll try it.

The following is a large lump of my fighters.

Spoiler: pictures

Tru-craft Condor:
Rail based landing gear, canopy.
Light weapons
10 block reactor

EDF-F1
Old system

EDF-Light fighter
Rail based canopy, folding wings.

Higaran Interceptor
Rail based canopy (on a swivel, never do them this way, it sucks)

I was just planning to build my fighters like that, just slightly bigger

 

[Ixalite]

FYI, last I checked, Schema mentioned not having any intention of making bombs AI usable. He added them in response to a need for lesser players needing to be able to stand up to larger threats with special tactics, not as something to encourage AI spam.

If you want a good drone weapon, try arc beams. They do massive damage for their size, they are AI friendly, and swarms of small fast attack ships should be able to actually close the distance necessary to focus fire with them.

Your point about the lack of AI use of bombs is disheartening, but I'm not surprised. As it is, just let me say something else in favor of the idea which I have been campaigning for for.... 5+ years now? AI RAMMING MODE!
That's all I want... missiles which are large, have limited ammunition, are a royal pain to use, but which actually kill the target.
AI Bombers can carry one or more (although launching them may be a trick)
I want a weapon to serve the role of naval torpedoes. It would take much less work than any other AI implementation. The only downside I can see is that you could make fleets of them and (I admit) really mess up the territory control / fleet management aspect of the game.