TSN Fighter

The TSN Medium Fighter is a small, single seat craft built for high speed and combat against other fighters and capital ships. It is not intended to operate alone, instead, it is usually attached to a Carrier or a base station. Single seat craft are not selected from the ship roster when logging into the server, you must select a capital ship to serve as home base for that fighter and fly it from the Flight Hangar console. 

TSN Fighters are extremely fast and maneuverable, able to turn on a dime, and equipped with a Boost engine that can achieve a relative speed of Warp 0.45. While a fighter cannot achieve FTL speeds, it is faster than just about any other starship or space monster at sublight speeds, including the Arvonian fighter. TSN Fighters are also able to stop dead in space, in a relatively short time. Fighters move in three dimensions, and are able to perform roll and pitch maneuvers, so they can dive down on enemies from above, or come up from underneath them.

Their single beam does an unexpectedly high amount of damage, firing with a two second reload rate. A TSN fighter is able to tear through a Kralien Cruiser's shields in ten seconds and is far more powerful than its Arvonian counterpart. It also carries five missiles, which are smaller but identical to a Homing Torpedo. The five missiles can be fired as fast as the fire button can be pressed, but once gone, the fighter must return to its home ship to reload.

Unlike capital ships, TSN fighters are equipped with capacitance shields that do not recharge over time. Instead, they must return to the home ship to restore the shield to full strength. The shield protects both the front and rear of the fighter and will take 100 damage before failing. It takes only 30 seconds to change out the shield capacitor after docking with the home ship, no matter how much damage was taken by the shields. Unfortunately, should the fighter's power systems fail, the overload will cause the capacitor to explode. The TSN Fighter is designed to jettison the pilot's escape pod just before this occurs, initiating a Microspace Jump back to the home ship.

The TSN Fighter's scanning equipment is limited in range, and its only communications are with the home ship. As such, the pilot requires information from the Science officer on enemy location and type. Fighters cannot adapt their beams to shield frequency, so they don't need that information, but Science can report how close an enemy's shields are to failing. A fighter may also require support from Weapons, as it can be overwhelmed by drones or other fighters. A fighter is able to dock with any base station in the sector, or even another capital ship besides its home ship. At this time, fighters do not use energy, and can go anywhere on the map, if given enough time to get there.

Although most capital ships only carry a single shuttle and fighter in their Flight Hanger, there is usually enough room in the hangar to host an entire squadron of fighters in an emergency. Thus, a squad of fighter pilots may use a Cruiser or Battleship as a forward base for convenient refuel and resupply. The pilots would launch from their base station and fly to the capital ship, docking near the front lines and transferring command to the ship's Captain.

Likewise, if a TSN Light Carrier wishes to make use of a squadron of TSN Bombers, its pilots can use Microspace Jump to hop to a base station, requisition a bomber, and return it to the home ship. This can help make up for the fact that the light carrier has no torpedoes of its own. Pilots have the option of jumping to a base station instead of their home ship on the loss of a fighter, so they can requisition a replacement if the carrier is running short. Microspace Jump is extremely jarring to the body and requires being in an escape pod in order to survive the harsh gravitational shears of a micro-wormhole, but TSN pilots enjoy bragging about how many Jumps they have subjected themselves to. 

Quick Stats

The TSN Fighter was introduced in Artemis 2.3 along with the TSN Medium Carrier. At first, it was the only single seat craft available and was created only as an experiment. The TSN Medium Carrier and its fighters and bombers quickly became a popular part of the Artemis game, and finally allowed combat and missions inspired by Battlestar Galactica. 

The fighter, like the shuttle and bomber, has also been greatly improved with the addition of a tactical map and the Engineering grid. It has lost a little shield strength, as it had 140 points of shield strength in Artemis 2.3, and 120 from 2.4 on. It had only a single shield, though, while Artemis Cosmos implements a redistributable front and rear shield. The ability to eject from a stricken craft, or just when you get lost, is also new to Artemis Cosmos. Damage has increased from 4 points per shot to 6 points per shot, and according to the data in shipData.json, the TSN Fighter has a natural fire rate of 6 damage every 2 seconds. This is not correct, since fighter beams are hardcoded to fire once per second for a playable fighter. 

Fighters are much faster in Artemis Cosmos, with a base speed of 1.5 times their speed in Artemis 2.4, and a boosted speed of almost half of Warp 1. It was 30% of Warp 1, which was faster than most enemies, but not at higher levels. Speeds in Artemis Cosmos seem lower overall, and if the range of speeds based on difficulty is narrower, then the TSN Fighter will always be one of the fastest ships at Impulse. 

The fighter's sensor range is a short as the TSN Shuttle's and limits the usefulness of the fighter's tactical map. As noted for the shuttle, the fighter is able to see contacts in sensor range of other allies, including the home ship, so it can see enemies at a significant range. But it's onboard minimap is small and cannot cover the entire sector. The pilots have access to a long-range 3D map when onboard the ship, however, on the Flight Hangar console. So a squadron can make a plan of attack before launching. 

According to the shipData file, the TSN Fighter has only 25 shields fore and aft. Presumably, the game multiplies this by 4, since single seat craft shields do not regenerate. Either that or the 100 value is hardcoded for the fighter in game, and the file is ignored. It is possible that this is related to the ability to redistribute shields. The redistribution may take place in blocks of 25 shield points. More testing is needed.