Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

AMEN!

I do wish that either the CB for newbies #2 or the CB #8 would kick off... I've been noodling through the files for some time now and want to take a crack at this mod.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I'm going to start booting people who don't upload their EMPs in order to make room for those who are more serious about this.

CB#8 has four players at the moment.
Its enough for a small game, but it would be nice to have enough players to form multiple alliances. Now's your chance to join.

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Atrocities:
Carriers are quite difficult to kill, particularily if you devote the appropriate tonnage to a good ratio of shields and armor.
Although when empty, a carrier is barely worth its tonnage in warships and can be easily overwhelmed, its fighters can be designed to make up for all of its deficiencies (point defense, mainly, but sheer firepower is good too).

The only thing a carrier and its fighters are not so good at, is missile bombardment. For the best bombardments, you want a constant stream of missiles with which to saturate the enemy ranks and avoid too much overkill.

A carrier which has lost its fighter complement has been essentially neutered. Unless its fighters dealt severe damage to the enemy before dying, the carrier dosen't stand a chance. It can certainly take hits, and may dish out enough damage to finish cripples, but its cargo bays are now empty, and support weapons should not have been a high priority.
Support weapons are for support ships.
Carrier weapons are the cargo bays http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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PS:
Perhaps I should make a graphical "Fighters 201: Design and Strategy" and post it up on imagemodserver.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

School's Open!
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...CBmodTutorial/

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I've found two show-stopping bugs in CB1.3D. It turns out that now that the Order Snafu (80%) is using all of the message lines an old typo is now coming to light. There are two lines named Message title 3, and this hangs the mod when it loads. If you change the second one to Message title 4, it loads correctly.

The second bug is a typo in the Battle fortress area of the vehicle text file. The "Combat To Hit Offence Plus" line needs to change offenCe to offenSe.

Once those changes are made the game loads.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

The files have already been fixed and updated on PBW.
Thanks!

PS:
New courses at CBschool:
FIG 340 : Bomber Design
FIG 380 : Interceptor Design

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Those are great courses! Nice info to consider, and some unique insights I hadn't thought about.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I think I'll try this mod. It looks very well done and polished. Questions (sorry I haven't read the entire thread yet; working on it):

By assigning different strategies, can different carriers have different fighter launch stack sizes? (after the battle, the ships would have to redistribute their respective fighters since fighters won't necessarily return to the ship that launched them)

How important are non-carrier hulls in this mod?

Do drones have any differences in this mod? Are there any advantages to using drones over fighters?

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

It has a steep learning curver that might turn off some players but otherwise is an excellent mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif A solid 10/10

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Slick, You ought to jump in on the PBW Carrier battles for Newbies, one slot left for us new guys learning the mod. CB #8 is filling up too, you could be in both, the newbies game according to SJ will go rather quickly, so you could do it parallel with CB#8 and not suffer in the latter.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Ah, questions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

1) Yes! Launch groups depend completely on the carrier's (or fleet's if you are not breaking formation) strategy.
The DEFAULTS have been set to launch in groups of 3.
Three is not an option in game, so if you ever change the strategy, you can't change it back. (5 is the minimum the game will let you change it to)

2) Carriers should take their fighters back in the same order and distribution they launched them in I think. I haven't tested it, but you will often leave combat with three half-filled carriers.

3) Non carrier hulls provide a lot of the flavour. Point defense, assault, missile tugs, transports, even micro-carriers.
Carriers are usually quite tough, and can have some support weapons, but they typically provide the variety vicariously through the mix of fighters they carry.
You need mixed fleets in order to do well. Some bombardment, some assault, some PD and lots of interceptors, dogfighters and bombers to fill in the gaps.

4) Drones do not exist as such.
The only hull types used are Ship, Fighter and Troop.
Satellites are available, but use the ship hull so that they require repairs and resupply after combat.
Mines do not exist; its honourable, stand up fights all around. Satellites fill the role of blocking warppoints.

5) Mixed use is the key here.
Ships need both shields and armor to minimize damage.
Short-range, long-range, ammo-using and energy-based direct fire weapons all have their niches. Mounts from 20mm antimissile popguns to 100mm shield-busting howitzers.
A wide variety of missiles are also available; everything from planetary bombardment beasts, to itty bitty anti-missile missiles (SE4 deluxe only http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) CSMs, multipurpose, antifighter, cluster missiles fill out the middle.