hello all,

i have been reading some combat reports and the term "fodder" always came up, and fodder always happens to be light fighters. Came someone explain the concept of fodders, how they work, and how to determine the amount of fodder for an attack mission

hope that this will help me and others who question the meaning and concept of fodder

Fodder is cheap ships that are used to absorb rapid fire, such as espionage probes or light fighters. They're used to keep you're big, valuable ships alive for the duration of the battle.

what pup said comes from the trem "cannon Fodder"

Restricted Section wrote:Fodder is a term for small, weak, inexpensive ships, usually Light Fighters, used to prevent larger ships from taking damage during attacks. It can also refer to inexpensive defences, usually Rocket Launchers or Light Lasers, used to increase the chances that more advanced defences (such as Gauss or Plasma Cannons) will not be destroyed during an attack.
As targets in a battle are chosen randomly, having lots of weaker units will decrease the chance that bigger ships will be targeted, taking damage and potentially destroying them.

In battle fodders are a mass array of weaker defense or attack units (ships or defense) that is used to either divert Rapid Fire (RF) or to take a mass blow in order to save the Much heavier and expensive units.

Here is an useful Simulation u might want to try to see the difference.

With same WSA (weapon/Shied/Armor) for both attacker and defender.

Attacker 30.000 Battleship (BS)
vs
Defender 20.000 Destroyers (DD)

and after that compare the result with

Attacker 30.000 Battleship (BS)
vs
Defender 20.000 Destroyers (DD) + 10.000 Light Fighter (LF)

you will understand the difference.

so...

how do we determine the amount of fodder we need?

Just punch it into the sim until you get results where you don't lose the ships you want to keep.

Usually with best case u need to supply the multiple of Rapid Fire times the defending heavy ship count.

so if u are sending probes as fodders against RIP then ideally you should send 1250xrip count to match the entire breath of rf. but that is unrealistic and kind of alot of work to spam out that many probes. so sim it till your loss is acceptable, and send 10% more than that. (ps: seldom sim lies)