What's your best carrier design?

[KiloOhm]

Hi,
Just got my copy yesterday and am planning on making a carrier group as soon as I can, just because I love the idea of having swarms of fighters to do my dirty work. What do people here use for their carrier design?

I think (for a light carrier anyway) I'm going to go with a Bridge, Life support, Crew, 15 bays, ECM, probably 2-3 Engines (best tech available), 2 Point Defense. This is pretty standard and should leave me enough room for some additional components, any suggestions?

Should I beef up the engine count to gain the additional supply? I plan on having a supply ship with the fleet.

I don't plan on adding weapons since I don't want the carrier itself getting into combat, should I add a heavy mounted gun just in case?

KiloOhm

[Puke]

if its going to be with a fleet, make sure you have enough engines on it not to slow the rest of the fleet down. if you have a resupply ship with the fleet, i would not worry about extra supply space on the carrier. and unless you are planning on playing tatical combat against a human I would not worry about point defense or too much armor either.

odds are you are going to give it a order set something like launch fighters and dont get hurt, it should retreat to the edge after it has launched its load. that means the only time it will be attacked is after the rest of your fleet is already waxed, and the only thing extra defenses will do is buy it time in the hopes that 30 turns run out before it can be destroyed.

of course, if you are going to use tactiacal combat, you might keep it up close to support other ships with its point defense, but you might as well use the space on fighters and have a dedicated point defense ship.

also, you may want to consider only having enough fighter bays for 1/2 or 1/3 of your fighters and putting the rest into cargo containers. it will slow down launch time, but increase your overall capacity.

[Taqwus]

Maybe a cloaking device, if you want to reduce the chance that you'll be attacked, and it's common on your other ships. Likewise, ECM III will make it less of a sitting duck if it IS attacked, and only takes up 10kt.

Definitely solar sail if you've got it. Pretty much standard on all my warships / fleet support ships as soon as I can get one.

Point defense will help if you run into an enemy carrier; if they have good propulsion tech, you won't be able to outrun the enemy fighters -- or, probably, their missiles, either. Depends on what kind of support you're going to give the carrier; will you include repair ships, point-defense ships, missile ships (might work well, actually; have your fighters follow the missiles if doing tactical, so PD kills the (free) missiles), etc?

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Courageous]

Personally, I find fleets with lots of
fighters to be really annoying. It slows
down strategic combat quite a bit, and in
any case the A.I. doesn't really appear to
know how to use them correctly yet.

I suggest you wait until a patch is released
to improve fighter behavior.


C//

[Shadow99]

Actually fighters no longer slow down my strategic combat (except for when I fire large Groups, say 100+ with at least 2 guns a piece). & the problem with the AI is two fold:

1) Does not build enough fighters (Oh wow you ahve 16 fighters I am so scarred! Not...)

2) Builds crappy fighter designs, partly from lack of reasearch into fighter weapons... I've never seen them build more than a light fighter with say 1 gun mount several engines & the required control systems... (fighters armed only with say a Missile Pod I is something I see alot)...

If they were to do these things well they could take on much larger threats than they do, but as is they are under teched & under staffed compared to human opponents...

Btw as for the original question I build combat carriers designed to aid the fighters from behind in combat, so for me a heavy carrier with 6000 cargo, 30 fighter bays (or 15 of my hangar bays), with 1500 shield pts., & a massive weapon mount (or two) are what I use...

[Mephisto]

quote:

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Originally posted by Shadow99:

1) Does not build enough fighters (Oh wow you ahve 16 fighters I am so scarred! Not...)

2) Builds crappy fighter designs, partly from lack of reasearch into fighter weapons... I've never seen them build more than a light fighter with say 1 gun mount several engines & the required control systems... (fighters armed only with say a Missile Pod I is something I see alot)...

---

Hang on, I'm just creating a Earthforce race that will use fighhters from start up, will build many of them (hopefully) and will use ECm, ECCM and shields even in fighters. Only thing left do to is making a sound research file so the AI gets to all the required tech. I tested it with high research, it is working so far.

[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 12 December 2000).]

[Talenn]

Mephisto: REALLY looking forward to that one!

As for carrier design? Well, I'm all for the carrier following the squadrons in and taking part. I tend to make my carriers missile armed so as to help in overloading enemy PDs.

Generally when I decide I'm going to play a 'fighter race', I research up the missile tree for support. Its a great force multiplier for your fighters when every ship in the fleet is sending in missiles for support.

Talenn

[Richard]

Actually I generally do not put any sort of defenses on my carriers. I generally put in as many extra cargo bays as I can to hold extra fighters. Then I rely on PD cruisers and my other support ships to do my dirty work.

I also split my fighters into three Groups:

CAP (fighters with limited engines but plenty of close in anti fighter firepower to ward off any guys who get through my PC)

Escort Fighters (a decent amount of engines and a mix of anti fighter and anti-ship weopns)

Bombers (Middle range of engines and no anti fighter weopons, just hopped up on missile pods).

I then stick the CAP between my PD cruiers and carrier and launch the remaining sets to go get my enemies.

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

[greghacke]

Richard's post is why I really love Malfador and Shrapnel. they don't just publish games, they _actually_ play them!

[KiloOhm]

That's what's wonderful about this game, eveyone gave me a slightly differen't tactic, there are soooo many options.

I think I like the idea of adding some missles to it to help overload PD turrets. While the AI may not be smart enough to build PD anyway, It'll at least let me try out some carrier designs to hopefully puy up a better fight against real opponents.

Thanks for the advice everyone!



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Regards,
KiloOhm