what is the purpose of docking the fighters and bombers

perhaps you'd want to dock them if you were attacked by a large group of flak frigates?

Maybe they regain hull points in the bay of ships. And for the planetary guys, myabe they just need to be near the spacebay to regain. Not really sure though.

yes I dock my fighters/bombers when killing militia with my capital solo.

There are a number of reasons but the main one is when you have lost them all and you don't want them all streaming out one by one as they rebuild. They will get decimated  - they are much more effective in group.  caseyphobic lists another very good reason.

If you wanted a few crucial seconds you could move your fighters to other sides of the gravity well to intercept people.

Docking would keep those ships safely inside your Capital ship, and if your opponent scouted the system they wouldn't get a tally of how many fighters you actually have built.

Fighters and bombers seem kinda underpowered right now, so I don't know how much of an impact knowing how many of them there are would have, but imagine if the bombers were powerful enough to annoy any Capitol ship. Then knowing they were there would definantly help prepare.

Perhaps in the future these kinds of ships will play a bigger role, and they're just preparing for it now. Only time will tell

Thanks for the replies. Any way that we can get auto-docking in as a feature?

Bombers are most certainly not weak, they just require large numbers. Yes, that sounds like it amounts to the same thing, but consider the mechanics of the buggers for a moment.

Five squadrons of bombers can cross the grav well quickly, and really screw up a frigate on a pass. It takes a long time to make a noticeable dent in an attack force.

Ten squadrons of bombers can certainly blow up a frigate or two on a pass. This is scary, one frigate every shot, with the carriers safe at the phase jump point.

Now go ahead and double that and you're decimating fleets, double it again and your bombers can one shot battle ships.

The same investment in standard ships is just as good for demolishing stuff, but nothing tops a swarm of bombers for clearing out static defenses and assassinating capital ships.

I like the idea of auto-docking, too. It'd reduce a lot of the clutter when I have 5 hanger bays guarding a planet.

Speaking of which. Wouldnt it be a potential game breaker where you could have all your carriers hang at a phase point, let your bombers go out and just phase jump after they have shot once or twice... not caring that they return? Shouldnt the carriers lose those fighters if they cant make it back before the jump?

(Edit thingy died. The forum likes to lock me out of my old posts now and then for some reason.)

Just to add, my last match had me clearing out my opponents with 57 squadrons of drones. Thats 417 bombers, with the modified carrier cap ship squad sizes. And an extra 18 from abilities. Along with the usual combat ships in escort.

That made a very, very large dent. An extreme example, maybe.

Jumping out before taking losses is exactly what I did. of course, had the enemy built phase disruptors it might have been hairier.

I mentioned this in another thread, but i wonder if you could organize your fighter/bombers into "wings" where they are basically a mini fleet that operate as one unit. That way you could dock/undock them, and have them go after X target. Instead of every which way.

Best you can do right now is to alt select a bomber or fighter to snag them all, to my knowledge.

Well from what I've seen the carrier's won't start charging for a jump unless their fighters are in the bays or a set amount of time (about how long it takes for a fighter squad to cross 3/4 of the well) has passed. I could be wrong but that's been my experience.

As for the fighter's being weak, just try building them in numbers. Had a game as the Advent where I built an entire fleet of carrier cruisers and carrier capitals, 59 strike craft in total. Before they set off on their attack they were ambushed, at point blank range (coming from the star I was going to, so they appeared all around my ships), by an enemy fleet with lots of close quarters ships (15+ heavy cruisers a Kol and a Marza). I was going to retreat...and then the fighters all hit the Marza Dreadnaught...and took it down to 200 hull. I ended up winning that encounter with only 1 lost carrier despite the fact his fleet was right on top of mine.

Combined with the fact that fighters can get across gravity wells far faster than ships they've become my new favorite weapon, and made the Advent my favorite race despite their weak superweapon .