What would you consider to be the operationally best bang for the buck CBT Inner Sphere Light, Medium, and Heavy fighters around 3075-80?
Also - do you pair identical fighters, or pair complementary ones? If you had a Leopard CV, would you use all one type, or various types of fighters?
1. What do you define as your "buck"? BV1, BV2, CBills, Tonnage? All of the above?
The answer is going to be different depending on what it is your comparing the ASF performance to.
Without more data, all I can say is one of my favorites for each.
Sparrowhawk-7D, Corsair-V14 (or the rare Samurai-26/27), Thunderbird-D46
2. Usually identical. But its not guaranteed, the RAT tables (and Life) rarely lead to a perfect assignment of pairs.
I recall my first big aero unit rolled up from RATs. A full 36 fighters. But in that 18 pairings nearly a 3rd were mixed.
But where possible I at least try to pair up by performance. For example...
Any of the Stukas, T-Birds, or Chippewa-W10 will all fall into the heavily armored LRM/LL gunboat category.
The medium Stingray, Corsair, Hellcat, or heavier Eagle, Transgressor all make good pairs with their 4/6MP + LL/ML armament.
The Sparrowhawk, Centurion, & Sholagar all make for a good group of similar Interceptors
Also, I've found Slayers, Samurai, & Hellcat-r's to be decent in making a long range big fuel tank group.
3. For a Leopard-CV.... Probably identical or at least similar, and for the actual fighters.... big, thickly armored & armed to the teeth.
Why? Because a Leo-CV is my deep space patrol boat for picket & intercept duty & for harassing other dropships. And for that I want VERY big fighters.