Fighters are the heart of BSG. Every Colonial warship has them, and so does every Cylon ship. And in large numbers too - the Battlestars having from 75-150 fighters. while the Cylon Basestars have around 2-300. They are the main offensive punch of the ships.

To represent this in normal SFB terms would result in a nightmare, not to mention that I doubt if anyone would have the proper amount of counters.
Thus most fighters (not shuttles) are grouped into flights, a flight being 8 fighter craft. Each flight has it is own counter. Fighters and shuttles not in flights use all normal rules, and are disabled and take damage as normal.

Movement Movement is treated as normal. Every fighter is assumed to operate within a flight, and so the flight counter can be moved as normal fighter rules. Launching Colonial fighters that launch from dedicated fighter carriers (such as Battlestars and Gunstars) are launched from special launch tubes. These propel the fighter to speed 12 at the moment of launch. Fighters launch in directions 2 or 6 depending on which bay they launch from. Colonial shuttles launching from these fighter carriers do so at normal speeds, but from direction 4. All recoveries are made from direction 4. Colonial Asp Class recon fighters, while operating singularly, also operate from launch tubes (just dedicated launch tubes) and thus follow the same rules as Viper flights launchings. Cylon fighters have no such restrictions or bonuses - Baseships having many launch bays in all directions. Regardless of the race, 1 fighter flight may be launched per bay. (2 on Battlestars, Gunstars and Baseships). In addition 1 shuttle (or fighter not in a flight) may also be launched per bay. At the same time, 1 shuttle or flight may be recovered. Colonial Asp fighters may also be launched 1 per bay (to account for their dedicated launch tubes). This is due to the fact that the dedicated fighter carriers have huge shuttle bays...

Ships Weapon Status: At the start of a scenario, a fighter flight may be substituted for a shuttle for launching purposes.

Fighters in SSD's

Each shuttle or Asp's Recon Viper box represent a single craft, and are destroyed as normal. Each Fighter flight though takes 3 boxes on the SSD. The first destroyed box kills one deck crew, and damages two fighters. The second and third (final) SSD boxes destroyed kills another deck crew, and destroys three fighters each. Of course, if the flight had already left, then no fighters are destroyed, but the deck crews are killed.
Empty fighter boxes on any ship are considered shuttle boxes for (J1.63).

Extra Fighters: Battlestars and Gunstars have very spacious hanger and fighter bays, and as such they can accommodate more fighters than they initially carry, although conditions do get cramped. A Battlestar or Gunstar may double capacity all its fighter or shuttle boxes. The boxes that are doubled up must be marked on the SSD as when they take damage, double the amount of fighters in that box are destroyed (thus the first hit on a flight that has doubled up its fighters loses four fighters, it will lose another four on the second hit, and the third and final hit will destroy the last eight fighters). The doubled fighter boxes can launch their first set of fighters as normal, but must then wait a full turn for the deck crews to line up the other fighters into the launch tubes before they can actually be launched. Double fighter boxes must be done in flights - thus if an additional flight is taken aboard a ship, it goes into a flight on the craft, and not spread around. Of course, if additional flights are carried, then they replace any lost flights first.
Cylon Baseships may also double up their fighters in this way.

Rearming fighters and shuttles

All fighters and shuttles rearm their expendable weapons (like Cobra missiles or mini-missiles) if they have any, via (J4.82), and this can only occur on a carrier. Only a carrier that starts a game carrying fighters or shuttles which carry expendable supplies, will be able to rearm those types of fighter, unless previous notice has been given.

Deck Crew

A fighter carrier or auxiliary carrier needs 1 deck crew per fighter box on the SSD. Usually this will equate to 1 deck crew per 1, 2 or three fighters depending on the box nd fighter being serviced. Within these limits, a deck crew can function normally for the amount of fighters that it can support. For a carrier that is carrying double capacity fighters, then either double the normal amount of deck crew are needed to support these extra fighters, or else the additional fighters will have to be serviced at a later time. Note that many Colonial vessels carry additional deck crew for this very purpose.

Combat: Fighters attack in their flights. What one fighter aims at, they all aim at. flights may make one attack per turn. The strength of the attack depends on the amount of fighters that are remaining in the flight - make a roll on the flight Attack Table. Fighter flight arcs are FA. When fighters take damage, all damage is applied to one fighter, and then when that is destroyed, the next fighter takes damage. Thus, always apply damage from top to bottom, left to right. This shouldn't be meant to imply that one fighter is always singled out and attacked, but rather that the flight as a whole has taken damage that would effectively reduce it is strength by one craft. flights are never disabled, and thus never suffer a speed loss.

Phaser 3's can damage more than one fighter if they hit (and score four points of damage). Larger phasers can only ever kill one fighter, and thus if they score more than three points of damage (or whatever is required to kill a fighter in the flight aimed at), the rest of the damage is ignored, although this three points of damage (or more if the fighters require more damage to kill) can be distributed over several fighter boxes on the flight SSD.

Fighter flights can, of course, damage more than one fighter per attack.

Flight Attack Table:

Aces get a -1 to the die roll to hit, and a +1 to be hit by others
Green pilots get a +1 to the die roll to hit, and a -1 to be hit by others

Use (E1.822) for all die-roll modifier shift effects.

A fighter may voluntarily fire at a reduced strength in order to inflict less damage on the target.

Dog fighting: Dogfighting can occur as normal, but it can be done via flights, with each flight taking the role one shuttle in the dogfight. Weapons are not low powered (these are not phasers!), but to simulate the erratic manoeuvring taking place, the range is still considered to be 2.

EW: Fighters have 2 points of ECM, but not ECCM. This ECM is also only used for the purposes of being shot at by anything larger than a phaser 2. Tactical Intelligence: At close ranges it is possible for scanners to determine how many fighters are in each flight, but at longer ranges, this is not possible. Thus fighters can automatically determine how many fighters are in a flight at ranges 0-10, and larger ships at a range of 0-25 (although for battles involving fighters and capital ships, the capital ships will be sending their sensor info to the fighters, so this range would not apply. Similiar fighters are used as scouts, so if they detect flights outside of a capital ships range, the info can be sent back). Note that flight locations are always known, just not neccassarily the amount of fighters in the flight.

Reforming Fighter flights: Fighter flights may be reformed by elements of other flights getting together. This may be done at anytime that several under strength fighter flights are docked in a shuttle bay. In open space two under strength flights may reform if they enter the same hex at the same speed and the same heading. flights reforming may not fire on the impulse that they reform.

At no time may a flight contain more than eight fighters.

Basic Types of Fighter:

There are several types of fighters available to the two warring races:

Turbos: If the flight/fighter does not use it is weapons in that turn, then it can increase it is speed to 30.
Optional: A fighter flight may use it is turbos and fire weapons in one turn, but it gets a +2 to the fighter flight table above if it does.

Colonial Asps: Colonial Asps are an important part of the Colonial arsenal, able to provide a wide range of functions, useful in any combat situation.
Asps have one scout channel, and function as Federation SWAC shuttles (J9.0) with the following modifications: The shuttle may not go wild, and the fighter must be within a range of 5 hexes to be able to give EW support to ships or fighter flights. An Asp is a fighter and does receive the basic 2 points of ECM (not ECCM), so ignore (J9.142).
The scout channel will be blinded if the Asp uses its turbos.

Cylon Large Fighters: The Cylons can use certain large fighters (if playing in the time of the 1000 yahren war) - these are listed in the section on ship types. The following rules apply to Cylon large fighters:
They are treated exactly as normal heavy fighters and can be crippled as normal. They do not operate in flights, and each counter is treated as a single ship. On an SSD which contains fighters (not shuttles), each fighter box may house one large fighter (and thus a flight can be substituted for three large fighters). It was very rare for them to be operated from anything other than a Baseship.

Scout Raiders function exactly like a Colonial Asp with regard to their EW abilities.