I agree that many of the Kilrathi fighters were inferior to Confed's, but NOT ALL. I would've loved to fly the Bloodfang fighter. I understand though the probs. that could have been faced in converting these, so I'm not saying they should have, just showing that some Kilrathi fighters- especially the Bloodfang- are just as good, and in this case, superior to those of Confed.
BLOODFANG.......................
Class: Super Fighter
Max Velocity 560 kps
Acceleration 375 k/s^2
Max Afterburner Velocity 1400 kps
Max Y/P/R 70/90/90 deg/s
Guns Tachyon Cannons (2), Plasma Guns (2)
Missile Hardpoints 3x3 (3HS/3FF/3IR)
Missile Decoys 12
Front Shield 250 cm
Rear Shield 400 cm
Front Armor 100 cm
Rear Armor 100 cm
Right/Left Armor 100 cm
Jump Capable Yes
As you can see, this ship has a faster max velocity than any fighter in the Confed fleet from both WC3 AND WC4- including the Bearcat and Razor (560vs.550). It also carries 9 missiles, which is more than the Bearcat and Razor. Although it's only one extra missile, it's 3x3, so you can have a better selection of missiles to choose from (or if you want only a few dumbfires for capships, you can load 3, and still have 6 air to air missiles left over vs. 4x4 on the Bearcat). Not many missile decoys though
. It's also Jump capable, which I think only the Excalibur could do. The shields are even more powerful that the Excalibur, and the armor is close too. The Bearcat is stronger from the front and sides, but the Bloodfang is stronger from behind. I would think though that it would be easier to fit a human into a Kilrathi fighter than it would be to fit a Kilrathi into a Confed fighter- as Hobbes must have done. It's not easier to add space to a fighter and/or squeeze into a really tight seat than it would be to reduce the size and/or fit into a larger cockpit. The other posts about requiring different skills from the techs, the negative associations attached to Kilrathi weapons, and the following quote are enough to convince me that it very likely wasn't worth the trouble:
Dundradal said:
The difficulties in converting a kilrathi ship to almost fully functioning terran ship is highly detailed in FC. There they also had access to cadre of kilrathi specialists and it still took a good deal of time, although they were working on a fairly battered ship, nonetheless it describes a lot of the problems that would be faced.
I'm not sure what "FC" means, but if it's WC canon, I would nominate this for the best explanation for why ship requisitioning never occured in the WC universe (of course as we know, the real reason is because the people who made the game didn't want to do it) . Again, I'm not claiming Confed should have requisitioned Kilrathi ships, I'm merely showing that there were superior Kilrathi fighters that COULD be worth requisitioning IF it proved cost effective. If the game designers felt that enough people would've liked to try flying Kilrathi technology (which prob. most people wouldn't, though I would have enjoyed it), there might be posts on these forums explaining why Confed was able to convert these fighters for service.