Carrier Battles Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

History of Carrier Battles #1 (part 1)
Note: Game time has been multiplied by ten to make it sound more plausible

2410 - 2420: Dawn of the Carrier Age
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In the years leading up to 2410, the Cult of SJ had colonized most of the planets within reach, and explored enough to know that there was no hope of habitable systems further out along the northeastern galactic arm. With each system less habitable than the last, the galactic core began to look more and more appealing. The subsequent push for coreward explorations would change the course of galactic history.

In 2410, an exploration fleet was commissioned and began construction on the Cult homeworld of Udix VII. The original plans called for a great number of missile-armed support gunboats and supply tugs to escort a flagship. The impracticality of this was soon apparent however, and the plans were repeatedly scaled back. By 2415, the grand exploration fleet was comprised of only a single Heathen-class anti-ship bombardment frigate and the flagship carrier, CSX Assisted Suicide. Sporting ten missile tubes with a wide range of small warheads, it would theoretically be able to destroy whatever the Heathen and its heavy missiles could not.

Command staff were under an ever increasing amount of pressure from above to locate more colonizable worlds, and late in 2415 they decided to halt construction of more ships and launch the expedition ahead of schedule. With only a single escort, and a mere third of the carrier's fighter complement loaded, the exploration fleet was quite underpowered. However the expected risk of an exploration mission is typically quite low, so the fleet was launched anyways.

In what may be the shortest exploration mission in recorded history, the Cultist explorers made their very first warp transit in 2417, and emerged right in the middle of a hostile fleet. Although the warppoint was unexplored at the time, we now know that it led directly from Udix to Narcisston. Many of you will recognize Narcisston as the homesystem of the Memnorak, and that is quite correct. Back in 2417, the Memnorak had been busy building a fleet of their own, and those ships were all positioned right where the Cultists were headed.

Now, in order to understand how the subsequent conflict played out, we must take note of early Memnorak design theory. Pre-reformation warships were completely under manual control. The bridge crew is much the same as today, however behind the scenes, tasks were done almost entirely by hand. Reactor stabilization, thrust vectoring, weapons management, they all were done by real people in the bowels of the ship. The other thing to note is the emphasis on weapons over defenses. The Memnorak Crusader, which is not to be confused with the later Cultist design of the same name, had four medium laser cannons, a depleted uranium cannon, and a cluster missile tube. Absolutely bristling with weapons for a frigate sized ship. However, in fitting all of those guns they completely neglected armor or shielding; the Memnorak battle plan relied instead on the ability to destroy their targets before the enemy could fire back.

Once the warp transit began, conflict was inevitable. The Memnorak could see the gravitational wake of the Assisted Suicide approaching, and knew that they could not afford to hold back. If any sigificant incoming object turned out to be a hostile warship, they needed to fire first or take heavy casualties. Memnorak commanders gave the only order they could; fire on sight. The Cultists on the other hand, were not under such pressure. Whatever the situation was, they needed to pull back and put room between them and the targets. The long range missiles carried by the Cultist ships would be only half as effective at point blank, so regardless of whether the sensor blips were friendly or hostile, a rapid retreat to weapon safe range was mandatory.

From surviving logs of the event, we know that the CSX Assisted Suicide emerged from the warppoint just south of the Memnorak fleet, while the escort emerged to the east. As ordered, the seven Memnorak ships immediately opened fire with their laser cannons on both ships. The Heathen was destroyed so quickly by the Memnorak ships that there are no recordings of the actual event. The Assisted Suicide, on the other hand, managed to deploy its defensive ice field in time and suffered almost no damage. The Memnorak laser cannons were refracted and diffused by the field, and what little energy did reach the hull was harmless. Since the Cultist carrier had no anti-ship weaponry, the Assisted Suicide had to launch fighters in the hopes of stopping the assault before a Memnorak ship got a lucky hit through.

This is when the design flaws of the Memnorak caught up with them. Orders are said to have come down from the Memnorak captains to target the fighters. However, the gunnery crew misunderstood, and opened fire with their cluster missiles only; the laser cannon batteries continued to target the carrier. Missiles were what the Cultist fighters were designed for, and the missiles were shot down almost before they could leave the tubes. Then, while the carrier's defenses glowed with the laser bombardment, the fighters were able to use their small anti-missile weapons to pepper the unprotected hulls of the Memnorak ships with fire. A short time later, the Memnorak fleet was debris and 90% of the fighters were back aboard the Assisted Suicide.

Although the Cultist military denies any damage to the Assisted Suicide in the first battle of the Zezzis warppoint, crew members serving on the carrier at the time say that one of the Memnorak laser beams did in fact manage to penetrate the ice field and start a fire in the port side crew quarters. Many Cultist museums have picked up on this story, and half-melted trinkets are sold by the thousands daily in gift shops across the empire.

Shortly after the warppoint battle, the CSX Assisted Suicide was attacked by four more Memnorak Crusaders which were en route to the warppoint, presumably to join the now-destroyed fleet. The incoming ships were swiftly destroyed by the Cult fighters long before they could close to anywhere near laser cannon range. This devastating loss of 80% of their standing navy over a mere two years was the driving force behind the Memnorak design reformation. By 2420, the Memnorak would be finishing the emergency construction of their first defense carrier, and with that, the Age of the Carrier had truly begun.

[Combat Wombat]

Does this mean that I am famous now that I am the co-star of a story?

[Captain Kwok]

I sure hope you do better next time CW, it'd make for a better story.

[Suicide Junkie]

The battle was far from over at turn 20.

At that point, I have a quarter carrier load of fighters, and CW was pumping out loaded carriers and had a fair number of support ships undergoing retrofits.

The second battle of the Udix warppoint was quite long and destructive, lasting almost 10 turns.

It is just the Dawn of the Carrier age

[Puke]

wow, i dont think that i have EVER seen a year long battle in SE4 - not counting planetary seiges, of course.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, it wasn't really continuous, but there was a constant stream of just-in-time reinforcements before one side gained control

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

SJ, I want to officially Thank You for sprouting the idea for this mod. I read a few early posts, and immediately started to implement a similar system of fighter combat in Capship (note: this was some time back, perhaps as much as 2 months). Therefore, hereby, I Thank You for this wonderful idea.

I customized it in Capship, however (didn't DL the actual mod);
-Fighter hulls are generally split up between Interceptors, Space Superiority Fighters and Bombers.
-Interceptors are the fast lot, they're the smallest but are excellently suited for swarming SSFs and bombers.
-SSFs are larger and slower, and can carry more potent weaponry. They are the principal means of defending your fleet against Bombers.
-Bombers are massive, lumbering craft which can strike hard at warships.
-Most fighter weapons can only target fighters and other small stuff, the anti-capital ship weapons are so large that only Bombers can mount them. These weapons are comparatively extremely powerful, so that Bombers remain useful and perhaps essential into the later game eras.
-Stock PD can only target seekers now, some/most ship-based weapons can also target fighters but are generally less effective than Interceptor/SSF escorts, because of the defense bonus of the fighters, and also because fighter armor is pretty strong. For truly effective fighter interference you're going to need your own strike craft escort.

There is nothing to stop you from placing masses of Interceptor weapons on a Bomber, that's a choice you'll have to make for yourself. It's not recommended or discouraged, but Interceptors were specifically meant for the light anti-fighter weapons, while Bombers should mainly be used as capital ship killers. Bombers have the potential to be more dangerous to powerful warships than a Dreadnought. It's always recommended you take at least one carrier stocked with ample supplies of all three fighter types when you send a fleet out on a (prolonged) campaign. This way, you'll have protection from enemy Bombers (which can utterly devastate a fleet if it isn't well-protected) as well as a means of performing quick, powerful strikes on an enemy fleet.

Strike craft are relatively cheap and fast to produce (though a powerful Bomber could take three or so turns to build), and the fact that they're real killers makes it easier for an empire under attack to build a modest fleet of Bombers to drive the enemy out. Said enemy could then build swarms of SSFs to counter the Bombers. Said Bombers would be generally useless then, but they can quickly build entire swarms of Interceptors to swarm the enemy SSF escorts and overcome their defenses, to cover for the Bombers.

Whoops, turned into a (promotional) rant there, sorry 'bout that! But still, Thank You SJ for this idea.

[Suicide Junkie]

You know, you really don't need to force a split between interceptors, superiority fighters and bombers.
I simply used a generic set of fighter hulls, and let the components speak for themselves.

- If you want anti-missile defense, you simply add lots of tiny mount guns and a big (QNP-style) engine to chase missiles with. More guns == more missiles shot down per turn.
- If you want a bomber, you use a smaller engine and cram the hull full of big missiles or heavy laser cannons for that big initial punch through the leaky shields. (You need to overload the quasi-emissive effect)
- Superiority fighters on the other hand, need heavier armor and the most efficient guns rather than the high damage-per-shot bomber weapons or the array of high accuracy weapons on the interceptor. (Make a wall, and chew up fighters without letting them pass)


In CB#2, Axel caught me by surprise with a squad of half-bombers.
They launched fewer missiles, but then followed up on the attack by picking off my lightly armored interceptors with guns as they rushed to the missiles.
I loved it. It didn't conform to my expectations, but made perfect sense in action Next time I'll have to bring some superiority fighters to take the hits and protect the interceptors while they do their job.


Getting rid of stock Point Defense altogether was one of the key features, too.
The autofire makes them essentially unbalancable.
Instead, you have to carry some sort of antimissile fighter type, or mount a bunch of short range 20mm cannons with lots of multiplex tracking to back them up. Or just armor up, and take the blows


It seems my ships have been resorting to the third method way too much in CarrierBattles #1
Massive assaults, running out of interceptors, and then being brutally pounded by bombardment ships. Its quite fun though, and I'll soon have some ships decked out with fifteen 20mm cannons just for point defense duty.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As I said, there's nothing to stop you from building Bombers filled to the brim with Interceptor weaponry. It's just that each type of fighter is larger than the previous one, and therefore can mount larger weapons. The Interceptors are small - tiny, even - fighters that cannot use many weapons, but are very cheap and can be produced and transported in droves, and can be used to overcome larger fighter's defenses to cover for the hard-hitting Bombers closing on the capital ships. SSFs can use larger, heavier, longer-ranged anti-fighter weapons, and are mainly useful (I think) for defending fleets against Bombers. Bombers are the only attack craft capable of using anti-ship weapons, and the Bomber anti-ship weapons are very powerful. A modest amount of Bombers can be more dangerous to a (2500kT!) Light Cruiser than a Dreadnought (somewhere between 15 and 20MT! There are currently three types of DNs). Bombers can be utterly devastating in the early game, if you research them you could gain a significant tactical advantage, however Interceptors and SSFs are far easier to research than Bombers and you could find yourself losing entire flights of expensive Bombers to swarms upon swamrs of dirt-cheap Interceptors.

Yes, attack craft (as I call fighters in Capship, since the Fighter denomination is mainly used to refer to SSFs) do have armor, and it can deflect most capital ship weapons.

Point Defense has practically been castrated, stock PD can only shoot seekers. You'll have to rely on other weapons (most notably Weapons Batteries) if you want to take on attack craft with a capital warship, but still the most effective way to counter Bombers - both economically and militarily - still remains Interceptors and SSFs.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, but my point is that you don't need to force those roles.
They come naturally given the appropriate components, and it allows a lot more freedom of design for the player.

The autofiring ability of point defense is the big kicker.
You always get to shoot the missiles, and the only way to get hit is to run out of shots.
Simply removing the autofire makes combat far more interesting, and missiles do not need to be uberly powerful and plentful in order to be a threat.