[Spaceships] Fighter Pilot Campiagn

[weby]

Note that if you want fighters in a nearly hard science campaign you need to basically do the following:
-Use safetech, as else unmanned drones will be better due to no need for life support and the ability when needed to send on one way missions not worrying about the delta-v to get back.
-Ignore realistic detection ranges, as any use of energy is way too easy to detect at insanely long ranges making any sort of "surprise" impossible.
-Do not allow beam weapons or make the really low power or allow really log engagement ranges. As there would be no "dodge" against something coming in at light speed if you are at small fraction of a light second distance. They will detect the fighter, aim at it and hit it before it has moves any real distance. If the distances are long enough then continuous evasive maneuvers might well work, but drain a LOT of delta-v.

It should be remembered that space carrier+fighter combat is not like airplanes against ships, it is more like torpedo boats against ships. That is they both work in the same medium and thus the advantages of the fighters is less. Historically torpedo boats have done well in few special raids and such, but mostly if they come up against real ships they just die...

Rebels would have a kind of hard time too as movement is so easy to detect in space. Something based purely on a single planet could well work as such is much easier to hide.

Then to the actual suggestions:
Bosses:
You could well use super vehicles as a thing for super components. Just build it as a modular ability with suitable modifiers(things like: gadget the actual fighter), that allows them to switch powers. If you do not use the unique gadget modifier then then a destroyed gadget can be reacquired(get a new fighter)

On the accelerations:
I would make the differences larger for different sizes. In my Star Wars campaign to get the fighters moving around larger ships I used 1g/module for fighters and 0.1g/module for anything large. Basically the smaller drive had a maximum total thrust possible making fighters be 5-8g normally, small agile ships (like the millennium falcon in the original) would have about 1g, large warshisp maybe 0.3g and large civilian ships 0.1g. That provided for three different tiers as seen in the films. That caused the feel "automatically". With much smaller differences as given by you there is really not that much of a difference.

On the pilot types:
There is also a few other types seen every now and then:
Lucky Luke: not as good as the other pilots but somehow the superior enemy fighter following him gets suddenly gets engine trouble. When the patrol is ambushed he is a bit behind because of some trouble so he has more time to react and so on.. Basically serendipity and luck in play with lower skill levels.
The master tactician: Might not be as good pilots as the best, but is the master of being calm and calculating odds, thus tending to be in the right place to maximize the use of his skills. Strategy/tactics and such to allow gaining upper hand.
and then there are of course a lot of variations for the two you mentioned.