From a gaming perspective, we do need to roll the players into this. If fighters have no realistic chance of doing anything to enemy ships, then there will be no interest in them and grousing about how nerfed they are.
How about saying vessels smaller than 100 tons moving at greater than 6Gs are more difficult to hit? Maybe they carry munitions that are armor piercing (already a thing in smaller weapons) that must be fired at close distances because they have massive acceleration but only for that very short burst and then burn out. Thus, a reason for larger ships to fear them but not something potent enough to upset the battle on grander scales. It would mean fighters once again have a purpose and a real role to play.
That might not satisfy those that argue that fighters are doomed to be swept into the dustbin of history but it keeps them viable for the game and adds a twist that unnerfs them while not making them all powerful.
It even makes it like fighters were in WWII. They’d have to get through incoming fire to take their shot. A hit might do little but it could, if lucky, cripple a big ship. That gives a reason why fighters would be relevant and why pilots would line up to sever.
This is a dangerous path.
It's the path of creating an arbitrary rule for a particular metagame effect, like making fighters viable so players who want to play fighter pilots attacking much larger ships can do that. Then this arbitrary rule has follow on effects that affect other things in the game, and at the absolute very least create unexplainable inconsistencies. These inconsistencies need more arbitrary rules to paper over the problems created by the first arbitrary rule, and this continues until there's a mess of greater or lesser complexity.
Even if fighters would made viable with arbitrary rules like special fighter agility, opponents would adapt by developing better point defense weapons, autonomous drones, and their own fighters... unless everyone's stupid and keeps making turbolaser turrets that can't track fast enough to defend themselves against snub fighters, and they don't launch missiles, and they don't launch their own fighters as soon as enemy fighters show up on sensors, all this despite being TL 12 to 15. And even then if fighters have special agility, so would missiles. Missile would outmatch fighter agility the same way fighters outmatch the agility of larger ships. And missiles aren't stupid. They're not going to crash into each other, or crash into things, because of fighter pilot does a spin or whatever.
I think a better way to do this is to build the best fighter one can according to the rules, and then ask in what situations would such craft be useful?
- Planetary invasions and other planetary operations.
- Ground attack, like bombing or attacking enemy troops and installations while the main ships attack the starport or other hardened targets.
- Actions against vacc suited troops in space
- Reconnaissance
- Search and rescue.
- The fast movement of personnel to other ships in a fleet or to worlds.
- Minelaying or deploying autonomous weapons systems
- Attacking unarmored or lightly armored starships, like enemy troop carriers or support ships.
- Attacking starships with missiles from stand off distances, effectively functioning like extra missile turrets.
- Point defense against drones or missiles.
- Escorting and providing fire support for battledress marines or troop carriers.
- Engaging enemy fighters engaged in any of the above missions.
WW2 carrier aircraft operations aren't a good template for this kind of character-focused gameplay. Carrier aircraft operated in groups of 30 to 90, and they took a lot of losses. The carrier based aircraft that were effective against surface ships were dive bombers and torpedo bombers rather than fighters.
Fighters attacking ships with missiles is probably the only viable role fighters would have in engagements with larger ships.
This kind of gameplay would push characters into group scenarios, like naval operations, etc. I guess a small pocket carrier or a patrol vessel with a complement of 5 to 10 fighters might be a good way to do this.
People only think of fighters as effective against large ships because of movies and shows, which throw sense out the window in favor of drama and story technique.
I prefer the method of looking at the rules, seeing the 'realities' they create, and then adapting the setting. To do otherwise is to throw out whatever sense, logic, cause and effect, or assumptions impartial application of the rules create, and just have a narrative driven story game.
