Fighters

Most ships are large in Oolite, even a cargo canister is as big (6x6x10m) as fighter planes. This allow to use Fuel Scoop as launcher of light ships stored in cargo space. No missiles and no cargo space on fighters but ejection seat is included so you should scoop your defeated pilots.

Fighters are available in equipment shop and not in shipyard as other ships but. Damaged fighters can not launch until not repaired in a station which has shipyard. Small scratches are repaired right when your fighters land back into your ship.

You can force them to land either by run to green alert or initiate a hyperjump countdown, then cancel it before can happen and repeat until no more fighters outside. You can follow the activity of your fighters in MFD.

In combat very hard to hit a fighter due to the extremely small size. The best if use your own fighters against them.

Worth to get more firepower or even decoy against pirates for these cheap costs.

Fighters

Fighter Class  Size(m)  Speed    Cost  Occupy En.+Arm Recharg Pitch Lasers     Other
Light   Knight 6x4x10   600      1000  5t     0+1     0       2.1   Pulse      No shields, just armor
Swarm   Pawn   6x2x10   500      2000  5t     0+0.5   1       2     3*Pulse    3 ships, organic armor, need 3 Alien Items
Raider  Bishop 13x3x16  400      3000  10t    2+0     2       2.2   Dual Pulse ECM, passive cloak in cloaked era
GalTech Rook   19x5x23  300/2100 5000  15t    2+0     2       1.8   Pulse      ECM, injectors, need Galaxy 6 or Constrictor mission
Shark   Queen  20x8x22  200/1400 10000 20t    2+1     2       1.4   Beam       ECM, organic, injectors, need 5 Alien Items, Galaxy 7 or Nova
King    King   28x6x18  100      50000 25t    2+4     2       1     Beam,Tharg ECM, organic, need 10 Alien Items, Galaxy 8 or Thargoid Plans

Light Fighter

A standard Knight-class Light Fighter occupy 5t cargo space, use Pulse Laser but no shields, so damages repairable only when landed. Lightning fast: 1.5 times faster than Asp but no Quirium fuel within so no injectors nor hyperdrive. Cost 1000 credits.

Swarm Fighter Group

Contain 3 Pawn-class fighters in a group, based on robot technology of Thargons which fly without pilots and save cargo space on mothership: need 1t for each fighter and additional 2t for supply so 5t in total. Slower and less durable than Knight-class Light Fighters, no shields but its organic armor regenerates slowly. A group together offer 3 Pulse Lasers but nothing else.

Use a single control link only due to the group always stay in close formation. Named to Swarm because a Fighter Bay can handle 16 groups so 48 fighters! This huge swarm fit into a Python also using 100t cargo space: 16 x 5t + 20t for the bay.

Need 3 Alien Items to build a group and cost 2000 credits. Repair first regroup 2 damaged groups into a single group without any cost. If only one group is damaged then need 2 Alien Items and 1000 credits, but you can decide to wait for the chance to merge instead.

Raider Fighter

Ships in Bishop-class need 10t space and Fighter Bay on your ship. Offer Dual Pulse Lasers, shields, ECM, more energy and faster recharge but slower than light fighters (still as fast as an Asp) and larger so less hard to hit.

Raiders will get passive stealth (decloak when fire) after you acquired a Cloaking Device. No fuel within so missing injector speeds and hyperdrive. Cost 2000 credits.

GalTech Fighter

The gap between Bishop and Queen fighter classes should be filled with a Rook class ship with injectors. This is why designers in Galaxy 6 are working on a smaller variant of GalTech Escort Fighter which is named to GalTech Fighter.

Prototypes where sizes are reduced to half in all 3 dimensions show good results, except can not fit dual pulse lasers nor cloaks, just a single pulse laser only. Still stronger than Knight-class fighter which also hold a pulse laser due to the built-in ECM and shields supported by two energy banks and unique intercept/runaway speed, at least until there are some fuel in the tank.

Shark Fighter

Developers in Galaxy 7 make efforts to produce Queen-class fast heavy fighters with organic armor and injectors.

King Fighter

The strongest King-class fighter occupy 25t in cargo bay, offer a turreted Thargoid Laser and a forward Pulse Laser, ECM, good recharge and shields, but the best part is the big organic armour plates around the ship which absorb all damages for a while and regenerates! Has strong scanner with double range (50km) which keep up target lock far from the mother and at hyperjump can follow you into the wormhole from this far. The slowest ship: even slower than an Anaconda, moreover missing injector speeds but a King rarely retreat.

Very costly: need 50.000 credits and 10 Alien Items. Only main stations can build these, moreover the necessary parts are available in Galaxy 8 only. If you complete Thargoid Plans mission then you can buy it in other Galaxies also as a thank you from GalCop.

To avoid high repair bills you should call back Kings when the lights are out which mean no more armor left. Your team in Fighter Bay will apply new armor and turret if needed in no time.

Fighter Bay

Ships over 5t cargo space considered as heavy fighters and need Fighter Bay to get enough large doors. Allocate 20t cargo space for a control room to raise the number of fighters supported by your ship from 8 to 16. Help also to do not lose your fighters if you jump to another system without landing them first, except those which are out of your scanner so can not reach your ship in time.

Fighter Support Center

Add communication and supply rooms like in a carrier which allow to handle 40 fighters, but occupy 100t space so need an Anaconda or larger ship to be useful.

Credits

Model of Ejected Pilot comes from Knotty's Astronaut OXP.

Model of Light Fighter comes from Shipbuilder's Colonial_Viper_Mark_1_V1.03.oxp.

Model of Swarm Fighter comes from Thargoid's Swarm OXP.

Model of Raider Fighter comes from Shipbuilder's Cylon_Raider_Mk1_lower_detail_model_V1.01.oxp.

Model of GalTech Fighter comes from Shipbuilder's GalTech Escort Fighter OXP.

Model of Shark Fighter comes from Thargoid's Aquatics OXP.

Model of King Fighter comes from Killer Wolf's kw-kc-capsule.dat in King Cobra OXP.

Instructions

Do not unzip the .oxz file, just move into the AddOns folder of your Oolite installation.

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 4.0. If you are re-using any piece of this OXP, please let me know by sending an e-mail to norbylite at gmail.com.

Changelog

2015.06.??. v1.0 First release.

Download

Work in progress.

Quick Facts

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
1.0	not yet	CC BY-NC-SA 4	Mini ships	Weapons OXPs	Norby	BB-Link