I'm going to add fighter icons to Weapon M's map, and I want their meaning to be intuitive. What do you think fighters look like?

My own conception of them is influenced by an article I read about what space-based warfare might really be like: swarms of small cubes with thrusters flying erratically in any direction, designed to deliver a small warhead to a target. I also think of them as looking like the fighters from the Buck Rogers board game...

http://th00.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/i/ ... 4hetbn.jpg

A little bit of everything, depending upon their "duty"

what do you think a ship would be represented as then if a fighter looks like that?

That depends on how many fighters that ship carries. It terms of size however, a ship that could have the fire power to invade a planet would be huge. Think in terms of the size of the invading ships in the "Indepenence Day" movie. To give you one example:

I think one of the best things about TW is the "graphics" are unlimited. Each player has a vision in their minds of what the fighters, ships, planets, ports and SD look like.

If this game ever does go high graphics, I hope it pulls from the original ANSI art as a starting point.

That's exactly the problem I'm thinking about.

Xwing fighters are entirely possible and not all that big.

http://gizmodo.com/305976/rocket+powered-21+foot+long-x+wing-model-actually-flies-updated-built+in-r2+d2

TradeWars fighters are considered to be unmanned, so they could be even smaller than that.

Unless they are carrying bb's and pellets they still have to be big enough to carry ammunition. I would assume at least 4 rockets per fighter.

That's why I say different types for different "duties". Toll figs don't need heavy arms, defensive figs would. Offensive figs don't need cannons, just large cargo holds for explosive materials.

Or, just don't give them an graphical representation and let them remain in the "eyes of the beholder". I think the only thing that can come close to topping my "mind's eye" would be Avatar type 3D graphics.

I think of TW fighters as unmanned kamikaze fighters. Send them out to an opponent's ship to collide with their fighters - and themselves in the process.

I wish I could find a link to that TV show or article or whatever it was that gave me the idea of fighters as swarms of tiny smart bombs. It made a lot of sense as a prediction of what space warfare might actually be like, and fits perfectly with TradeWars. In ship-to-ship combat, the target launches its own fighters as a form of explosive reactive armor. And fighters get used up even against targets that don't fight back, like colonists.

If all this is true, then they shouldn't even be called fighters because they don't actually fight. They really are missiles instead.