Fighter Explosion
My strategy is still largely experimental and builds a lot from what I have seen from George and Isshia Sudhop. Basically I think the number one mistake people make is not building enough fighters in the first few turns. How many is enough? Well, in LG I strongly recommend 16-20 and I might even go higher if it were possible. I'd probably wait until I got a couple planets before going beyond 16 though and I can also see a case for starting with 8 and adding more from the first captured planets. Anything lower isn't enough. However, fighters are only good early on. Once people are turtled up fighters have a really hard time taking HW's (unless you use missiles).
This is how I am currently playing:
Turn 1) Build enough shipyards to build 16 3-gun fighters in a turn (2000). Put 800 land into com facilities and the rest of your land into research on fighter thrust. If you're unlucky and have less than 2800 land you can cut back to 2-gun fighters or try starting with just 8.
Turn 2) Your shipyards will build the 16 fighters, 8 will remain in storage on the planet though since only 8 can be launched in a tuyrn. Put the 8 active fighters on ignore planets and send them to points N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW of your HW and a couple hundred clicks away. (Note: If I know I'm going to be away from the computer I may not bother putting them on ignore planets, but doing so gets them moving faster.) Destroy all except 1 shipyard (you may be able to destroy all the shipyards and still keep the queued ships, but I haven't wanted to risk it). Build another 800 (total 1600) com facilities and put the rest into research (fighter thrust).
Turn 3) The next 8 fighters pop out. Send these to the points midway between the points your other fighters have gone to in the circle formed by those destinations. Destroy com facilities and put everything into fighter research.
After Turn 3) If you told your fighters to ignore planets you'll want to rebuild Com Facilities in about 4 turns and tell your fighters to conquer planets again. Also, once fighter thrust has reached 6 or so, turn it off and put everything into BC's and Lasers. With decent laser upgrades and 3 guns each your fighters should murder most peoples scout fighters (amazing how common 1-gun ships are). As well, you don't really need to worry about defense at your HW unless someone takes out your fighters first. Captured HW's should go almost completely to research with a little espionage on the side. By the time you get BC's you should have several HW's and probably will have run into a couple that are actually trying to resist...build your BC's as close to those as possible and send them in. As you run out of ship slots, self-destruct fighters that are no longer useful and replace them with BC's.
Problems, Options, Etc.
This works well partly because there are a large number of unoccupied or undefended planets in a relatively dense area of space in LG games. As density decreases espionage becomes a better option than a ship sweep and if all planets had defenses it might be worth skipping fighters entirely.
I usually kick in some Espionage fairly soon (generally on my first conquered HW). Since that will ensure that I pick up any HW's my fighters miss in their sweep. This is optional though and generally I find I'm just picking up stars as my fighters reach them, often after the HW in the system has been taken already.
This could be improved by micromanging the fighter search pattern. A key reason for this is the way ships move and the way the map works. Ships will only fly in the 8 cardinal directions, not the 8 intermediate ones mentioned or any other angle. This means they bunch up as they are heading out until they reach the split off points. So, they do not disperse correctly and may miss areas. On the plus side, they still help as a HW on the path may be hit by 3 of your fighters instead of just 1 and that may be enough to punch through a lightly defended planet.
This strategy provided by member-about.cgi?8870>Tom Schipper, guest contributor.
