T-Fighters..... or not?

When i first went through EoC, i picked up the turret fighters, used them for a few missions, and then stopped.

I found that to give them enough punch, i needed to use gatlings, but and anything other than point-blank range, they missed and wasted ammo. i needed to use very careful control of the fire/hold fire keys to control ammo usage. in large dogfights this was impossible, so i stopped using them and just outfitted my tug with normal gats and such. I never found them much use as wingmen, with their horrible aim, and i tended to lose them when i used my favourite maneuver (quickly flicking lds on and off to control velocity, when i on occaision messed up and left lds on, zooming away to never see them again, unless i returned to base.) I continued to use my own guns for the rest of the game, not even when i got the patcom and heavy corvette which had room for t-fighters and weapons.

Anyone else agree with me?

i kinda like using them as turrets, but definitely not as wingmen. i normally just give each 1 pbc, and 12 harrower missiles (i don't have anything else and don't wanna go pirating weapons all too bad, even though pirating is strangely relaxing). after that (i have the patcom, so my equipment may be more extensive than yours if you're using a tug) i have one twinpack launcher, which i need to upgrade, and 3 quad-light pbcs. i find that using that loadout i can take on perhaps 4 or maybe 5 marauder cutters. i just use the t-fighters for sniping, coz pbcs have a range of 10 km hehehe. then the marauders close, only to find 3 hot quad-light pcbs aimed right at them.

they suck as wingmen though. yes they do

If the turret fighters are armed with Heavy PBC's they are fairly effective as wingmen. Against a heavily escorted merchant vessel, I usually attack the freighter to draw off the escorts, then allow the turret fighters to continue the attack while I deal with the escorts. Once the freighter drops its cargo, I'll pull them back to handle the escorts.

The thing is, you have to be careful when they cause a target to flee. They'll follow, and usually never come back, leaving you short-handed for further pirating.

While I played the game I typically never used them as anything but turrets. Until you recieve the Weapon Fire Link, they add a good ammount of firepower to the tug. It's in free-form mode where I use them for pirating (I like to pirate in the tug).

In my opinion, tfighters are useful as turrets once you have good weapons that don't use ammo. They are especially useful for pirating because I can attack the freighters while my helpful turrets take out any escorts attacking me.

its not because that i cant fit anymore weaponry, i have played through the whole game 3 times, so i have had ample time to fit the fighters on to the Patcom or HC, i just prefer to use my own control.