Just jumped into the game a couple of days ago and thought about fighters or gunships. My thoughts;
It's easy to heap on feature creep, with more and more types with other customizable options. I think the concept needs to be trimmed down to the minimum to make it easier to implement, then expand from there. Fighters IMOshould start as remote drones on the ship layer armed with a single laser. If it works, expand it,to other drone types and then maybe manned drones.
In creating my own content I've learned going big can kill a project because of the work involved. A single remote drone that gets supplied with energy for the flight time, then self destructs if there is no recovery chute, would be a good start.