How on earth can you fit enough stuff into only 500 tons? (I'm trying to make a fighter.)
1. What engine stuff do you use? What tech level of engine do you wait to have before making fighters? What engine size (1 or 2) do you use? What trade-offs (explosion vs power vs efficiency etc.) do you use?
2. What lasers/fire control do you put on your fighters?
3. Do you include anti-missile stuff, armor, shields, anything?
4. Do you include engineering spaces? (Fighter-size, of course.)
3. Usually, no, not at low tech levels. You want the fastest and most mission-compact vessels you can get, for the following reasons:
-Fighters have the defense of redundancy. They are easily replaceable and manufacturable, and can be deployed in really large numbers. A size 300 detonation is almost nothing to a fighter task group, as that is only one fighter going down, for instance.
-Fighters have evasion by speed bypassing tracking speeds, and evasion by remaining under active sensor headers for long ranges (mainly for missile fighters.) This will allow you to fire missiles a lot closer to certain targets without retaliation, as long as you can draw an active sensor bead back on them.
There could be times where you put anti-missile tech on fighters, but only to protect other task groups, not the fighters themselves. Fighter sized engineering space depends on how long you want to deploy them.
1. In terms of asset risk, highest multipliers for power plants are A-OK on fighters, as a destroyed power plant on a fighter is outright crippling anyway, the chance of the power plants being destroyed before the fighter entirely is low, and secondary explosions will only damage the fighter the power plants are on, which are likely to have been crippled anyway.
2.For beam weapons, you got a few options.
-Plasma carronades if you want your fighter to headbutt and explode enemy ships at short range in the early game. Could likewise erase the armor off of normal fighters as well. Haven't tested this though, it's likely that it performs worse than I expect it to.
-Particle beams will allow your fighters to kite other fighters rather well, as you can jack up the range pretty high without any increase to size.
-Mesons are also a good choice for mangling internal components early game onwards.
-Lasers are good for impromptu fighter-mounted point defense, or for alpha strikes, especially considering spinally mounted capacitor-reduced lasers. Will bore an impressive hole in even the thickest armors if you got enough power behind it. Unfortunately, reactor space becomes an issue, as power required no longer scales with capacitor recharge.
-Microwaves are good for blinding commercial designs or otherwise vulnerable designs, allowing you to surgically remove it's engines before boarding it, for instance.
-Railguns, or higher level gauss, are decent enough for sandpapering down armor over time, making an enemy killable eventually if your TG can stick to them.
In terms of fire control, obviously use fighter-only designs for the increased speed efficiency. Make your FCs as fast as your fighter can move (not any faster), and set the range to what's most appropriate for your mission-equipment without crippling your fighter with overweight.