It should be noted that the Tigress has, among other things, 50 batteries of Fusion guns. Ostensibly these are there specifically to eat up fighters and small craft.
Which works just fine ... at short range.
At long range, those fighters are "safe" from the Fusion guns ... at which point those Fusion guns get shifted over from the anti-fighter to the anti-missile role.
Still, if you throw 300 fighters at a Tigress and they can only knock down 50 of them per combat turn ... 250 ... 200 ... 150 ... 100 ... 50 ... that's going to be multiple combat rounds during which the Tigress is still under attack and "busy" with Aff Aff (anti-fighter anti-fighter).
So the most obvious option to maximize the asymmetry between fighters and a dreadnaught target like a Tigress would be use of ... triple beam lasers and single particle accelerator turrets (not barbettes).
- 30 lasers on 10 fighters costs 3*10=30EP and gives you a combined factor: 9 beam laser battery with a base to hit of 4 @ short range, 5 @ long range ... which also need to be able to penetrate sandcasters.
- 10 particle accelerators on 10 fighters costs 5*10=50EP and gives you a combined factor: 7 particle accelerator battery with a base to hit of 5 @ short or long range ... which sandcasters cannot stop.
After that, it's just a question of putting the biggest computer
you can afford into those fighters in order to maximize your chances of actually hitting for damage with those weapons (and at what ranges and against what defenses). This is where the "stacking" of your formations starts coming into play.
10 fighters need to roll a base 5 to hit with factor: 7 ... but 6 fighters need to roll a base 6 to hit with factor: 5.
So 3 shots to hit a 5+ ... or 5 shots to hit a 6+ ... when it comes to decisions about organizing formations. Depending on the specifics of the engagement (big ship vs small ship) the answer to that question might change.
All things considered, fighters armed with a particle accelerator and the biggest computer that can be economically installed (somewhere in the model/5-7 range sounds about right) starts making for the best anti-capital ship fighters that you can manage.
Sure, against a Tigress with Armor: 12, the best you can hope for is 2+6+12=20 on the damage result ... and 22+ is no effect ... but 20 and 21 results are Weapon-1 on both the surface explosion and radiation damage tables, so fighters using lasers or better yet particle accelerators from long range (to stay away from the fusion guns) could potentially inflict SOME damage to the weapon systems and start reducing the arsenal onboard a Tigress. The nice thing about using energy weapons for this job instead of nukes would be that the lasers and particle accelerators would have "deep magazine" effectiveness (no physical ammo to expend) and could keep up the harassing fire for as long as they don't get shot down (or until recalled). Sure, the spinal mount could "pop" one fighter at a time, so they won't last forever ... but when there's a LOT of fighters harassing you, time is on the side of the swarm, not on the side of the dreadnaught fending off the swarm (hence why the Tigress has their own fighters for dealing with such nuisances).