But as soon as your opponent equips his scouts with point defense or buys bigger ships, your fighters become basically cannon fodder.Īll of this is to say that fighters may have their place, but they are not as glorious or far-reaching a place as I personally would like. Short term, they offer a possible quick leg up-for example, you can buy fighter technology and a carrier fully loaded with level 1 fighters for 52 CPs, while the technology and ship cost to build one battlecruiser is 60 (leaving out shipyard considerations). And since you will almost certainly be buying bigger ships eventually anyway, I tend to question the long-term strategy benefits of investing in fighters. You can throw so many fighters at it that you tilt the odds in your favor, but it is simply easier to build a few battleships instead to take it down, or even build your own dreadnaught. In Space Empires, if you bring several squadrons of fighters against a Dreadnought, it is likely just going to smash through them and move on. This is (to my civilian mind) far more realistic than the film franchise I mentioned. Or at least, it is not likely that they will. The fighters in Space Empires cannot do that. Multiple times, in fact-and for some reason, it always works.
It is an affinity that doubtless comes in part from a certain popular sci-fi movie franchise, in which daring rebels use swarms of tiny ships to bring down colossal enemy space stations.
