Sure, why not.

i like the idea of Carrier type vessels..

Especially if you could customize the ships it could hold.  to me the idea of very fast, short range fighters, that could be stationed at space stations, planets, or on carriers..   (carriers you would use to move them around the galaxy..

they could work different than normal ships perhaps...

they could swarm any hostile target, making the target hit with less accuracy. The ships could also cause damage as well.  Swarms of ships, among the battles could look really cool too.

Fighters could have different strategic load outs for example..  

Boosters for hit and runs on ships a short ways from the base..

Radar scramblers..  the Defensive interceptor..  Add shields, and radar scramblers to mess with enemy radars. Make them much less effective while your fleet rolls in to do the real damage..

High yeild bomber runs.. An off shoot of the fighter, The bomber.  Slightly larger, slower, but harder hitting  (perhaps bombers take the space as two attack fighters). Great for taking down star-bases or softening up planet defenses, or even extra fire power in fleet battles.

Combine fleets, with different types, Mix and match with cruisers and battleships.

this could also lead to specialized military research items for the other ships to defend against such things. It really could add a whole other layer of tactics, and dimension to the game.  Things like, do you create a defensive wing for a resource mining station off some place away from your empire.  Sure you could use the typical fleet, eating up maintenance, and basically cloning the ships you already have.  I often leave wings of small ships on space stations, but for some reason it feels sorta wrong or just not cool in how they interact with the planet/stations/fleets... 

I imagine seeing my space station orbiting around the planet i am space mining, and when a few enemy battle cruisers get to close, they fly into action. While the ships would be more than sufficient for protection at the space station, with out other tactics, to stop them from running, or perhaps they are just a suicide diversion. you would be using resources so spending in one place, verse another, would be part of the strats involved..   Besides, watching a wing of 3 or 6 Attack fighters, launch out of space doors, and attack, and then retreat back into the station could be a really cool site..   Or in the fleet battles with larger ships, and swarming attack fighters, to see another 10-20-30-40.. ect could really make for some spectacular animation.  Maybe research could add to the size of the squadron.)  

Add modules, to space stations, or ships,  to add more (squadrons)..  planets could have tile enhancements to hold more ships, for more fortified worlds.

Perhaps they could work differently than normal ships..    with no long range, meaning they have a base of operation, and they only can move a distance from that point.  But perhaps in that area of space they can move much faster than the normal ship..   give them pro's and cons..   A fleet of say 20 normal attack fighters, would have a range or any where..  But a fleet of the short range squadron fighters, may only have a Sector or 2 range, But maybe they fly at double the speed of a normal ship with the same engine. 

there is a ton that could be done to make them interesting, cool, and different than normal ships..  for me the biggest issue is not what we could do with them, or the options.. but how you would code the AI to use something so cool!

Well i would certainly think a tiny fighter, would hardly take up as much maintenance as a normal ship that could hop from system to system,..  Perhaps you could use Tiny ships, and create "wings"  Say a wing is 3 ships grouped, that in essence would become a single "tiny" ship"   So sort of 3 for the price of one. 

As the ships would become tied, to  Stations, planets, or a carrier, the costs of maintance i would have to think would be less than full on normal ships. I would think it would be a % thing counting towards , verse,  an all out typical per ship cost that one normally would pay. But it makes me wonder how many people even use Tiny ships for anything other than scouting?

Perhaps a very rare/situation Invasion rush, to perhaps take down a few stacked colony ships?    Unless i missed something about them.  for me personally small's build so fast, they have seemed the goto choice for any early war waging, or protection.. Basically the only use for them i ever have, is early scouting, and then upgrading to scouting+survey for an early income bonus. 

On a very rare occasion i have made all weapon tiny ships.. (through the upgrade process)  to bolster a current fleet, from a very early attack. Basically i have very few small ships already, and adding 3-4 tiny ships, might make the difference.

Other changes could be made to make this more interesting as well.  I am a big believer, that ships have far to much base range. Smaller maps is almost rediculous, you often don't even need to add a single life support to travel the whole map.  Larger maps it is more useful though, but hardly a must have research. Good planet spread upgrading to higher levels, just makes you able to add more weapons/defense.   Only on the largest maps, with the lowest number of stars/planets does life support really take on true worth as a tech.

So reduced ranges, and carriers could really make for some interesting builds. (sorry to go back off the topic of maintenance, but i think you understand my thinking, i hope)

To me, with fighters, a "wing" would have to be some multiple of a "squadron", a "squadron" would have to be some multiple of a "flight", and a "flight" would have to be some multiple of individual units. Arbitrarily lets say 8 fighters to a flight, 3 flights (24 fighters) to a squadron, 4 squadrons (96 fighters) to a wing, and one wing to a carrier.

At least this would mimic what the USAF has done (at least when I was in it, although the USAF doesn't have carriers, the USN does).

From this post:

"GalCiv III has sublight speed, mass, rate of fire, weapons range, accuracy and evasion to deal with along with the roles of ships in a fleet."

Based on screenshots available to us Founders, there'll be Long Range, High Efficiency, and Low Mass versions of weapons, and High Density, High Yield, and High Efficiency versions of defenses available.

Aaaaand I won't be buying this game. Endless Space  combat 'did alright'. I thought Galciv devs would want better.

Pitty, it could've been great. At least I won't waste my time waiting on this game. GG I'm out.

The founder's page revealed some interesting things; there are a large number of different aspects to combat now, instead of just HP and the attack/defense ratings. These include; rate of fire, ship speed, range and transversal. There are also "long range", "High efficiency" and "Low mass" weaponry, alongside "augmentation" techs for them. Still, details are pretty sparse. 

We know that there will be no full-fledged tactical combat, but some sort of "general orders" are possible if dev posts are to be believed.

I strongly suggest you give the game a chance.

Space fighters would definitely break the immersion for me.  Space fighters make about as much sense as dropping grizzly-bears with laser cannons on their backs from orbit - sure, it would look cool, and sure, you could argue that it might be marginally effective, but would you really want the devs to spend time on that?

More to the point, space just doesn't work that way.  Even if you have space-magic gizmos that reduce your mass, you'd be hard pressed to pack enough fuel to dogfight for 30 seconds and make it back to your carrier.  Even if you managed to pack a fusion reactor on your fighter, and packed half your mass in fuel, and made the best engine you could sanely imagine, you've only just packed enough fuel to pull 30 seconds of 5g maneuvers, not including fuel to get to and from the carrier.

Pilots don't make much sense either, but that was already addressed, so I'll skip it.

But at the end of the day, unless you're invading a planet, it will always be more effective to launch a guided missile on a one-way trip than to launch a fighter carrying said missile.  I'm not saying the game needs to be realistic - it isn't - but it does need to be convincing enough that it doesn't jar you our of the experience, and that means that combat needs to be consistent with the game universe.

tl;dr: Go Big or Go Home!

I am extremely excited to hear that carriers are being brought into the game. Being in the military myself, I usually bring tactics I've learned into the game play. With the addition of having weapons focus on accuracy as well this is a huge step forward in making a more realistic experience. In GCII I hated that massive capital ships were one shooting my tiny recon ships. Yes, I agree a giant mass driver could destroy a little fighter in one shot, but have you ever tried to shot a fly with an AR-15? This will make small gunboats or carriers with small interceptors in a fleet that more vital. No longer will the end game be nothing but who has the biggest ship. Just look at modern history how the mighty battleship, the previous centerpiece to any navy is now an obsolete relic. However, I can now see the use of battleships to take out larger carriers with gunboat support taking out any tiny fighters.

Another aspect with this is I hope with the carrier modules you can just load you own tiny, small and maybe even cruiser class ships in them. The reason for this is I tend to always play on the largest maps. Sadly anything small in GCII gets left behind as the larger capital ships go into battle. This will bring new tactics into the game since now I can bring my more agile ships to the front lines. This would free up the tiny ships from the burden of carrying as much life support and engines as their capital ship brothers. Maybe it could just work like most RTS games in which transports have a set number of slots, such as in starcraft. A marine of course takes up less space then a tank and I could see that system working with hanger modules. I really hope this is the case so that my tiny ships will actually be useful late in the game.

We don't know how fighters are going to work with ship roles and the like, so they may very well matter. I doubt they'd have been added in if they weren't going to do *something*.

From a look at the first page a lot of people see no use for a starfigher.While I'll admit that in GalCiv it wouldn't work unless GalCivIII allows you to target weapons,which gets me to my point.Fighters are able to target importent system,and,unless the starship has anti-fighter weapons,are harder to hit with the "big guns".If you can tell a ship what to do the starfighter could have a purpose.

I think you need to provide some links to technical journals where this is discussed.

Rudy, no vibration could be conveyed.  The firing astronaut need not have any radio, but the astronaut that hears the gunshot would have to have a functioning receiver.  The violent discharge of the rifle creates an electromagnetic wave which would be carry over as noise on any near-by radio receiver.  It doesn't have to be a great deal of energy, because radios amplify.  This is common sense.

An EMP has an abrupt wave-form, making it difficult for circuitry to react to.   Theoretically, if you made a fast enough switch, you could ground out your antenna before the EMP wave of a nuclear blast fried your radio.

Of course, this all assumes that you are using radio communication.  Now if your ships can predict where each other are at all times, they may establish a LASER link.  This might be immune from EMP.  Some kind of quantum entanglement communicator would also be immune.  But then, anything on a ship you are communicating with that acts like an electromagnetic antenna would convey any electromagnetic noise internally.  It could very easily bleed over onto anything conveying an audio signal.

Space weapons would only generate noise, because humans like to communicate by broadcasting audio.  Aliens that communicate visually or by scent would perceive the electromagnetic noise generated by space weapons very differently.