Hangar pet

Hangar Pets are small, lightweight vessels that can be deployed from ships with Hangar Bays (such as Carriers, Strike Wing Escorts, Flight Deck Carriers and Dreadnoughts).

Most are extremely agile and can easily outmaneuver any playable vessel. Hangar pets may specialize in direct damage firepower support, repairing the mothership or weakening/disabling enemies. Most direct damage dealing pets have 20km attack range, which is the double of 10km range of most directed energy and projectile starship-mounted weapons. Additionally, while attacking the pets do not prevent the launching starship from using full impulse, thus making it possible to easily outmaneuver even the most agile escort-type foes that have no hangar pets of their own, by keeping them at a distance with their full impulse being disabled under attack.

Due to their weak shields and hull however most hangar pets are easily destroyed - although due to their number they can inflict damage if not dealt with on time. Hangar pets are most easily destroyed by using AoE BOff abilities such as or.

While they cannot be individually controlled, players can dispatch orders and commands to the wings of hangar pets through the use of carrier commands. Carrier commands are a built-in set of 4 abilities available on any ship capable of deploying hangar pets.

Auto launch can be enabled by right-clicking the icon that launches hangar pets. This will add a green frame and "Autofiring!" text on the launch ability. However, initial launch will have be to manually activated, after which ability becomes automated by deploying new pets when possible.

Overview
''Squad size refers to the number of hangar pets deployed per wing. Each hangar bay can support up to two deployed wings at the same time.''
 * Carriers and Heavy Dreadnoughts have 2 hangar bays with a maximum of four wings launched at the same time.
 * Command Battlecruisers, Dreadnoughts, Flight Deck Raptors, Multi-Mission Science Vessels, Strike Wing Escorts, and Tactical Carrier Warbirds have 1 hangar bay with a maximum of two wings launched at the same time.

Carrier commands
Carrier commands allow a player to control hangar pets in space. When activated they set the combat of all hangar pets that are currently summoned to either aggressive or defensive, and can make them move out to the currently selected target or back to the player's ship. Carrier commands are not used to summon or unsummon hangar pets (although selecting any command other than "Recall" will launch again any pet that had redocked to the player's ship after spawning).

There are four commands that can be given to hangar pets:
 * (Sends your craft to attack your currently-selected target)
 * (Sends your craft to attack your currently-selected target)


 * (Sends your craft to escort your currently-selected ally)
 * (Sends your craft to escort your currently-selected ally)


 * (Orders your craft to intercept incoming mines, torpedoes, and small craft)
 * (Orders your craft to intercept incoming mines, torpedoes, and small craft)


 * (Orders your craft to return to the hangar and regenerate)
 * (Orders your craft to return to the hangar and regenerate)

Ranks
Hangar Pets gain Ranks while active. There are a total of five ranks; each rank-up will improve their performance over time. Each launched fighter gains ranks separately. Ranks are slowly gained based upon the time they spend in combat without dying. Reaching Rank 5 requires a total of 5 minutes of active Combat time, with lower ranks being more quickly achieved than those at the high end.

Each time a hangar pet achieves the next Rank, it gains the following stat buffs:
 * 25% Hull Heal
 * +5/10/15/20/25% (depending on the rank) Maximum Hull Capacity
 * Tachyon Drones, Siphon Drones and Shield Repair Drones will instead gain +10/20/30/40/50% Max HP, due to their limited combat utility.
 * Runabouts, Delta Flyers and all Frigate hangar pets will instead only gain +2/4/6/8/10% Max HP, due to their higher starting base value.
 * +2/4/6/8/10% (depending on the rank) Damage Bonus
 * non-damaging hangar pets will instead gain other unique bonuses:
 * Tachyon Drones will drain -10 more shields per tick, per Rank
 * Shield Repair Drones will repair 10% more shields per tick, per Rank
 * Siphon Drones do not currently gain in effectiveness as they Rank Up, other than Max HP

Weaponry
Hangar pets come with a variety of weapon loadouts, which are listed below. Some utilize beam weapons, others cannons, and a select few mix both types of energy weapons (e.g. Elachi Oschu Shuttles); the energy type generally matches the type used by starships of their faction. Several higher-quality hangar pets gain more weapons above the baseline version, though some do not, instead gaining more abilities.

Many hangar pets feature a torpedo launcher, or gain one at those higher qualities, and a select few have mine launchers. Note that it is generally advised to avoid using hangar pets with torpedo launchers on a build utilizing, as the pets will often take the buff for themselves and have much lower damage potential than a player. Some hangar pets list that they have "Micro" Beams or Torpedo Launchers, but this wording appears to be cosmetic; they function similar or identically to standard beam arrays and torpedo launchers.

Frigates have the largest assortment of weapons, while several support hangar pets have no weapons at all. Squadron pets are actually a single entity that appears to be multiple fighters, and have a large combined weapon loadout to give this appearance, eg. the Tactical Flyer Squadrons have six omni-directional beam arrays in each "group". These differences are purely cosmetic.

One particular quirk about hangar pets, most prevalent at quality, is that very few are equipped with Single Cannons (such as the Plesh Brek Frigates), but rather most have a slightly different kind of weapon known as Pulse Cannons instead. Pulse Cannons are exclusive to hangar pets, so the exact stats of these weapons such as their base damage are not known, but they appear to be a 180-degree weapon very similar to a Single Cannon. For most hangar pets, the higher-quality version replaces any Pulse Cannons with Turrets, though exceptions exist, including Armored Marauding Force shuttles, Bleth Choas Fighters, Orion Interceptors, Stalker Fighters, and S'Kul Fighters. There are no hangar pets as of this writing with both a Pulse Cannon and a Turret.

Prior to the March 4th, 2021 patch, Pulse Cannons were affected by a severe bug that made them deal more damage than Dual Cannons when under the effect of, which was most often caused by the trait. Since that patch they appear to behave the same as Single Cannons. As such, in the Available hangar pets section below, Pulse Cannons are indicated with a Single Cannon icon.

Procurement
You must own a Carrier, Dreadnought, Strike Wing Escort, Flight Deck Carrier or Multi-Mission Science Vessel in order to use hangar pets. Every new starship with hangar bay comes pre-fitted with a full set of hangar pets. All standard issue hangar pets on new ships are of quality.


 * Federation and Federation-aligned players can purchase fighters from Starship Component Vendors on Earth Spacedock, Deep Space K-7, Deep Space 9 and Starbase 39 for 25,355.


 * Klingon and Klingon-aligned players can purchase fighters from Gurkan located in the Shipyard over Qo'noS, Ch'korgh at Ganalda Space Station and Starship Component Vendors on Deep Space 9 for 25,355.


 * Romulan Republic players can purchase hangar pets from Ship and Shuttle Requisitions Officer in New Romulus Command for 25,355.


 * fighters can be purchased through the Dilithium Store for 30,250 . For characters that are members of any Fleet - depending on the level of your Fleet Dilithium Mine, the cost can be lowered to 25,712 . Most are found in the "Hangar Pets" section, with the exception of Advanced Jem'Hadar Fighters and Advanced Jem'Hadar Attack Ship which are found in the "Special Items and Boxes" section.


 * Most if not all faction-specific and cross-faction fighters, excluding a few noted exceptions such as Elite Obelisk Swarmers, can be purchased from your Fleet Starbase for 100,000  and 45,000  after upgrading the Communication Array to Tier V. Depending on the level of your Fleet Dilithium Mine, the cost can be lowered to 38,250  and 100,000 .   Your fleet requires Starbase Science Personal Requisition Provisions to purchase.


 * Universal, and  Obelisk Swarmers can be purchased from your Fleet Spire after upgrading your Spire Research Facilities to Tier I, II and III respectively. Depending on the level of your Fleet Dilithium Mine, the cost can be lowered to 38,250  and 100,000  at Elite quality. Ship-locked ,  Obelisk Swarmers are obtained from the Obelisk Carrier (and its Advanced variant), and  respectively.


 * , and  Scorpion Fighters can be claimed through the Reputation: New Romulus.
 * , and  Tholian Widow Fighters can be claimed through the Reputation: Nukara Strikeforce.

Available hangar pets

 * Attack: Armed, with either no abilities or only self-enhancing abilities.
 * Support: Unarmed, provides buffs or heals to friendly ships.
 * Debuff: Unarmed. hampers opponents by debuffing / reducing their capabilities.
 * Multirole: A combination between Attack, Support and / or Debuff roles.
 * Raider: Capable of boarding hostile ships OR stealing resources (energy drains / siphons not included).
 * Frigate: Powerful independent ships, heavily armed with multiple abilities and very small squad size (only one per wing); much higher hull point than fighters.
 * Note that as mentioned above, Pulse Cannons are indicated with the same icon as Single Cannons.