2.2 Not the time to return

[WillFrog]

I haven't played with them yet, but my impression is that the headliner feature of 2.2 Guardians of having ship launched fighters to watch your back in a scrape is going to have the overall effect of making life easier for traders & explorers. If they can be troubled to use them. In my experience, a lot of the pilots in either of those groups are often strangely resistant to taking preventive self defense measures.

I haven't played with them either yet but I don't see how they're going to help me trade or explore. They take a class 5 slot at a minimum, so that means giving up at least 32 tons of cargo space, and they take a percentage of your profits. That's the downside so what's the upside? I can't see one really for my trade 'conda. I don't fight in it, I run away! By the time the fighter is deployed I'll already be gone.

As for exploring, why would I haul the extra weight of a fighter bay out into the deep black where there's nothing to fight?

The only use case I can see for SLF's is large combat ships. Of course I don't do my fighting in a large ship - I use an FDL - so no help there either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯