Fighters V Bombers

The clear cut answer is that each is better in different situations.

Fighters do anti-light damage. This means the get a bonus against bombers, colony frigates, long range frigates, and scouts. They are ok against other fighters.

Fighters, however, suck against anything with medium armor and up. In the upcoming patch, they're going to do 50% instead of 25% against medium and up, but still, it's godawful.

Bombers do anti-very heavy damage. They are good against buildings and heavy cruisers. It's worth nothing that they're fairly strong against capital ships too. They're not too bad against heavy and medium armor.

Bombers, however, are very vulnerable to fighters. They can actually take a good bit of punishment when up against flak. They still die, make no mistake, but they'll last way longer against flak than fighters will.


Which one is best? I'd have to say it depends on what stage of the game you're in. In early games, people make scouts, lrf's, and colony frigates, so fighters are best early.

Once you go on the offensive (since you'll be up against enemy tactical structures), bombers are best. When hc's pop up, then bombers are best again.

Still, what happens is late game you should at most be doing 1 fighter squadron for every 1 bomber squadron, for the sake of balance. Early game, just get fighters, but do pick the bombers if a planet has the heavy cruiser pirates.

Bombers are the best damage output in the game... by far. They are your heavy hitters. Use them to destroy buildings, capships, heavy cruisers, and other cruisers.

Fighters primary purpose is to kill bombers. (Flak will not cut it against a dedicated bomber force)


As far as Bomber worthy targets: your opponent won't have many/you won't have access to them until later in the game. Further more you won't be able to build enough bombers to make critical strikes against them until later in the game.

Fighters on the other hand are also useful against early game targets such as LRMs, Scouts, Seige Frigates, and colony frigates. They can be a significant threat even in the small numbers available to you early on.

A couple flak will knock them out, but I believe if you catch him by surprise with your fighters and continue pushing hard, he will have to invest significantly in flack to slow you down. Which is still a good thing.


So... simply put:

Fighters are good against early game targets.
Bombers are good against late game targets.

Fighters are also good against bombers.


I recommend filling your hangar bays with fighters... as their primary purpose is to deter from light harassment by things like LRMs and seige frigates, and make scouting more difficult.

Snap>>>> thanks for the input  :CONGRAT:

one thing i have been trying lately is a mixed force 5:1 bombers to fighters. I will generally make sure the fighters stay near my fleet to engage bad guy bombers. mean while most of my bombers will go off to attack tactical structures. it has been working pretty well against the ai so far.

unless you are playing against advent. wherin you have to deal with so many fighters that they eat all your bombers (no matter how many you bring) and still have enough left over to chew up all exposed light to medium frigates

Is there any way to change your fighter units into bomber units and your bomber units into fighter units after you've already chosen what they should be? It kinda sucks that you can't do that later on in the game.

For hangers I guess you could just salvage the hanger and put up a new one, which makes some sense since maybe you have to pay to replace your fighters with new bombers and vice versa, but how the heck would you change the mix on one of your capital ships?

You can change them, and it's one of the strengths of the unit. You can right click on the squadron you selected and it will all self destruct, opening a slot for you to pick the other type of ship. This applies for anything that can make fighters/bombers. Caps, carriers, or hangars.

This is great because when you have 10 squadrons of fighters and HC's show up, you can go back in, scuttle (but get no resources unfortunately) and choose the other type.

Yes, just right click the fight or bomber production icon.

Quick question: it seems, both from the unit descriptions and this post, that neither fighters or bombers are really effective against line-of-battle frigates (the cobalt, etc.). Which one is better against them? I know fighters have a sizeable damage reduction against them, but I think I read somewhere that bombers don't do full damage vs. them either.

Well, they shouldn't be too good against light frigates, as light frigates are the counter. Fighters and bombers aren't too good against medium armor, which the light frigate has.

Carriers have heavy armor. Light frigates do anti-heavy damage, and are the only ship besides maybe bombers that can chase down the actual carrier and destroy it.

Lrf's can somewhat chase them down, but be wary of fighters if you're using lrf's.

HC's can in general catch them, but be wary of enemy bombers if you're using HC's.

Bombers are the best way of killing HCs short of throwing MORE HC's at them, or sending in capships. I've had planets with 2 fighter squadrons and 4 bomber squadrons (along with turrets) defend themselves quite capably against HC assaults for some time, until support arrives.

Adding to the last post, a mixed force of fighters and bombers (1:2 ratio) is the best place, IMO, to put your tactical points, along with a repair platform or two and a phase jump inhibitor. The fighters help offset any enemy bombers in an assault, whereas the bombers can effectively harass heavier frigates and caps.

does any1 feel that since fighters r immune 2 bombers and r free, flak is almost useless? sure u need carriers, but since u can destroy the fighters and get bombers and
vice versa, they seem more flexible in my opinion

Not sure I understand what you mean. Fighters are important in a fleet that has multiple LC's, LRM's, or HC's. In particular a fleet with multiple light frigates can get torn apart by an ample size of enemy fighters. Bombers are good against HC'S and Caps, however I've not seen a group of bombers by themselves that can be effective against a mixed fleet. I think flak frig's are a bit overrated, I'd just as soon build a group of LC's because you can toggle fighter/bomber production. The extra bit of flexibility is worth the cost of the LC's even though I usually lose a handfull of them in battle.

heres my input: if you litter the sky with enough bombers then you can kill the fighters base which will end them and problem solved. plus enough bombers (and the right amount of research) can decemate andy planetary defenses within 5 minutes

My input: Fighters are ESSENTIAL in early game as has been stated repeatedly already. However, depending on the circumstances, mid-game will vary for me. If I see that the opposition is merely trying to pump out a lot of low-cost units, they have a lot of carriers (which is usually the case with Hard AI, especially the Advent), or if I see LRM's and such being an issue, I will usually try to get a considerable amount of fighters deployed (usually from a cap ship). If this isn't an issue, I'll stick with flak frigates since they're a bit more resilient and can easily be repaired. Late-game, however, when everyone has huge fleets running around, I've come up with a little bit of a twist. It's essential to have a good number of fighters to overcome possible enemy fighters/other light units, but try to keep your bombers grounded as much as possible until the sky is clear of fighters. It takes a bit of micromanaging, and you might forget to deploy your bombers sometimes (this shouldn't be an issue), but trust me it'll rake in rewards of indubituously large sizes. As far as the ratio of bombers/fighters is concerned, I think it's mostly situational(I usually go with about 4:1 fighter to bomber), but it also has to do with the faction and fleet preference. Just try to make sure you don't focus on fighter:bobmers only, but also try to compliment with the rest of your fleet.

I agree, it is mostly dependent on the situation. I prefer to keep a large number of fighters around while playing the SoSG mod. I've found other empire fleets rely heavily on fighters.

oblivion86 hit the nail on the head, I've played a number of times against a large number of unfair AI and decent human players, and without a doubt fighters are your most useful multipurpose weapon against their fleets. Microing bombers is essential at any juncture in the game because they aren't really effective against most of the earlier warships and can get fragged quickly, better to keep them in reserve to take out a cruiser (HC's specifically) or capship. The damage they do otherwise really isn't worth having them deployed. This in turn means that really the bomber is a mid to end game strikecraft, but even then I think it is secondary to that of the fighter simply because the fighter is effective against its dopplegangers and specific but nevertheless annoying frigates (Ex. LRFs). The only time I really use bombers early on is either to secure a Desert planet or the random Terran planet with an HC, or to take down an opponent's capship early on. Nothing feels quite as satisfying as watching the cap just about to jump away with 100-500 more HP than can be eaten away by your fleet, only to have your bombers fly in and finish it off the moment before it completes the jump.

Get 4-5 fighters into a LRM battle with someone who is not building flak/fighters themselves and it gets interesting I win a number of spam battles by getting them into the mix instead of just more LRMs (I still pump some more out as I need to keep my cheap ship numbers up). And then throw in the odd bombers or two to take down structures/caps or cruisers if someone rushes to them (e.g. Kodiaks).
I was playing against a player the other night who was LRM spamming and then put kodiaks into the mix and I was 2 military strucutres and the research upgrade away from kodiaks. I thought I was in trouble - turns out he was as my mixed fleet (including a bomber/fighter mix) took out his LRMs and HCs without my fleet being too badly decimated...

As others previously mentioned, Fighters are clearly superior early-game, while Bombers become more important later on once Heavy Cruisers become dominant in fleets. Still, Fighters cut through LRMs real quickly, but Bombers I've found to be useful as distractions. A level 6 Sova with Rapid Manufacturing and full Bomber support is real useful, though they can sometimes be a bit too slow.

My opinion is that both are good for different situations, as everybody mentioned above. But I have a slightly different oulook on them. I build mostly fighter squadrons, with three fighter squadrons to every bomber squad. I think this is better because I favor close ship combat and I like the fighters to clear the way for the the rest of my fleet.

What's with all the downright ancient thread revivals lately?

 

Pretty open shut discussion as it is.  Fighters are best early game, and as the game goes on the balance gets more and more in favour of bombers.

see that other thread wasn't necro. this one on the other hand is most definitely necro. the first post from april 10th 2009 has NOTHING IN IT. 

I would like to also point out that my post (Jul 08) was when 1.05 was being played and fighters were hardly built. So the conversation about fighters now vs then is quite different...