How do you launch Fighters manually ?

I'm glad you created this thread because I have similar issues with this topic. Fighters are overwhelmingly one of my favorite things in this game, but they present multiple complications that I believe need to be addressed and are currently being mishandled by the game mechanics.

For instance: The description of engines and weapons ( small for fighter/troop or normal for ships ) specifically state they hold 'X' amount of 'supplies' and/or 'ordinance' and yet these values are zeroed out! once these vehicles are brought aboard a carrier, or become part of the cargo of a planet.

That is patently ridiculous!

It's like saying that every car that boards a ferry to cross from the mainland to an island must dump it's fuel into the ferry's fuel tank and can not embark upon reaching it's destination without refueling from the ferry's fuel tank! WTFITAA!

Why can't a fighter aboard a carrier be assumed to already be supplied and ordinanced according to it's own weapon, engine, supply and ordinance specifications? Why must those containers be "assumed" to be empty and totally dependant upon initially filling from the carrier or planets storage upon launch?

I can understand that fighters need to refuel and rearm during combat and will draw upon reserves from the carrier when they do so, but I disagree that a fighters initial launch must drain carrier or planet reserves when the vehicle specification clearly states that those items ( engines/weapons/supply/ordinance ) are already holding "X" amount!

I Want The 58th In My Sky And Raining Fire!!

The items say the components can hold, not that they WILL hold that amount while in storage.

Think of it this way: cars might not empty out their gas tanks, but I can GARAUNTEE you that navy carrier's don't leave their missiles and bombs on the airplanes 24/7 (ready fighters excepted). The unecessary hazard that produces is a nightmare, especially since one accident could easily cause a chain reaction (I think the name of the vessel in question was the Forrestal, while the problem started in the area with the launching planes, it was complicated by the ready presence of additional arms and fuel near initial explosion).

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

" Galactica Actual this is Blue Squadron requesting transfer from Caprica Prime, over."

"Blue Squadron this is Galactica Actual; our fuel, supply and ordinance holds are currently at maximum capacity, please jetison all of your fuel, supplies and ordinance before landing aboard Galactica, over.

"Roger Galactica Actual; we will coast in on fumes, completely unarmed and without oxygen until you resupply us upon touchdown, Blue Squadron out."

I Want The 58th In My Sky And Raining Fire!!

*That* is ridiculous.

That said, having carriers fuel fighters out of their own reserves before launch isn't.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

That carriers can hold more fighters than it can supply with it's reserves. I think having storage mandatory on carrier would make things better like 30% fighters bay, 20% storage and the rest is up to you...

I am quite happy with the way things work with fighters at the moment. With one exception that a carriers capacity for fighters can quite easily exceed the same carriers ability to supply them especially if the fighter TL is high (and hence the number of fighters which may be carried) compared to Cargo TL and to a lesser extent engine TL as cargo TL determines the capacity of stores and ordinance.

A way around this would be either to reduce the number of fighter bays required on a carrier or to give fighter bays a small ordinance and stores capacity the same way engines give stores. Or to have fighters carried as cargo and have fighter bays as launchers only and determine the rate of lunch

Until then the only round it is to use advanced carrier hulls with high TL stores and ordinance and lots of it and not to pack them to the limit with fighters. Arming your fighters with energy weapons would also I think help.

Fighters are cool and very powerful just at the moment fiddly to use

I guess another way to fix carrier would be to increase fighter bay size and include some ordnance and supply to each of them so no matter what your carrier is like, you would have enough to keep your fighters happy. It would also decrease the insane numbers of fighters we can carry around compared to how many weapons we can load on ships...

My issue here is that having lots of fighters, drones, and satellites in a baseship drains that baseship of all supply and ordnance at the beginning of combat.

Ive had supplyless space stations launch fully supplied fighters. Are you sure that the fighters emptying out the carriers of its supplies is supposed to be like that?

Not sure about this one but I think stations tend to draw supply from the planets they orbit. The real test would be building a station remote from a planet with a ship mounted yard. This requires a Tl of 10+ in ship yards btw. Then see what happens

In all the other posts no one ever said if it could be done manually. Can it? And How?

Have you tryied to read the manual?

Yes and there was nothing there.

ATM, it appears to be a bug that you can't launch fighters manually. (You used to be able to, no clue whats goign on there). The controls are there, but you crash when you try. IN fact, someone said the AI wasn't launching anymore either... odd...

Also, no, you can't have some fighters act as a reserve unless you set up the default strategy for their type to behave that way, which I'm not sure how to do.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.