help on fighter types

[davidcalif]

what's the difference between space control fighters and interceptor fighters? Do they serve different role in combat or they serve the same purpose but only differ in the amount of damage they cause. The other question is what's the purpose of dual weapon pod. I have the dual phaser pod for the fighters, but I don't see any increase of damage except it took more space. Please help.

[Eric S]

The dual pods shoot twice per recharge period. Unfortunately, that's the question I can answer reliably.

My guess is that interceptors are small and have fewer hitpoints, so their purpose is probably to fight other fighters, intercept missiles, etc.

Space Control Fighters are heavier, designed to take and dish out more punishment, so their purpose is probably to take on small ships, or even midsized ships with enough numbers.

[Cabbagemeister]

I believe that in practice the two fighter types will serve the exact same purpose. Both preferentially attack enemy task forces and will not serve a point defense role (i.e. going after other fighters/missiles) unless there are no enemy ships or planets in scanner range. So, yeah, interceptors don't actually intercept anything, at least not as their primary role. Possibly this may be related to the PD bug, similar to how pd missiles won't target enemy missiles. Until we get a patch, the difference between the fighter types is similar to the difference between missile chasses: more space, more power, more armor and shields.

As for the dual pods, they do cause more damage per fighter, but you won't see a big difference in absolute damage because you have less fighters overall. In my mind this improvement is not worth it, since it gives you similar damage capacity (maybe a bit more) but fewer fighters and thus fewer overall hitpoints. Your fighter swarms will get destroyed earlier, which is really bad considering that the big advantage of fighters is their staying power--that they will just stick around and continue to do damage, unlike a missile volley which just does one hit.