It's lonely here! (First post!)

[Suicide Junkie]

It sounds like you need a challenge.
How about some Carrier Battles mod?

Grab v1.5, and you will find that on No Bonus setting, the AIs are powerful adversaries, and even the Neutrals are scary!

[Hunpecked]

I'm tempted. I appreciate a good challenging AI. Problem is, I detest the concept of space fighters as seen in such sci fi productions as "Star Wars", "Battlestar Galactica", and "Babylon 5". The futuristic space carrier is supposedly analogous to the 20th Century aircraft carrier; however, since all spacecraft operate in the same medium, it's actually more like a 20th Century "PT boat carrier". I'm just not excited by the idea of "patrol boats in space".

In fact, I'm thinking of removing all fighter tech from the next game, just so the AIs don't waste any of their efforts on it. In the last game (stock + TDM) it didn't do them any good, anyway.

[Suicide Junkie]

A better equivalent would be choppers, I think.

Quick, manoeuverable, and fairly easy to replace when lost in combat.
Particularily compared to capital ships, which are slow, long ranged, tough, and very expensive.

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By the way, don't let the name fool you.
Carrier Battles mod is about BALANCE, not fighters.
The fact that fighters and missiles are useful is a side-effect of the balance.

You may want to keep an eye on the PBW game "Carrier-Free Battles mod #1", and sign up as a replacement, should anyone have RL troubles.

I think I'll open a second CFB game too...


PS:
In CB#3 game, I use fleets composed of about 10% carriers, 30% Missile ships, 30% point defense, and 30% Assault ships (short range/high power, direct fire guns)

Eorg went a little nuts, building only carriers. That worked for a while, because he was a Disposable Society (double build rate), and he put his foot down with overwhelming force. However, the rest of us quickly learned to build a lot of antifighter designs... AF missiles, 40mm torpedoes, cluster missiles.
When Eorg failed to modify his own designs (IE use a mix of gunboats and missile ships, instead of all-fighters) to counter our new fighter-killers, he was defeated.
His carriers often got away, since we had little anti-ship firepower, but he was losing thousands of fighters in every battle, culminating in a big 300-ship vs 5000-fighter clash, which finally broke his navy.

The point to all this, is fighters are quite useful, but certainly not sufficient, and not completely nessesary.
The same can be said of ships, missiles, direct fire weapons, just about anything in CB.
The best fleet will have a healthy mix of everything, with strategies set so that the different types of ships and fighters support each other; covering each others' weaknesses, and clearing the way for their strengths.

With such a fleet, I recently defeated a 400 ship fleet which was over-fightered, over missiled, under-PD'd, and very lacking in direct-fire assault ships.

[Hunpecked]

Interesting. Maybe I will look into it.

One question: Would the AIs be disadvantaged if I took mine and fighter techs out of a CB game?

[Suicide Junkie]

There are no mines in CBmod. Heavy torpedo satellites on the blind side of a warppoint are the closest you'll get to that.

Removing fighters would certainly degrade the AI's performance, but if you also remove the carrier hulls, at least they won't waste their time building carriers.
I'm sure you'll find that fighters are not that bad, however.
They are just one of the many facets of a CB navy.


You could just leave the carriers and fighters in, but not use them yourself...
After all, anything a fighter can do, a ship can do too (except for the being placed in cargo thing)
You will, of course, have to build more ships than your enemies, but you will have more build queue time to dedicate...
You may also have to build a higher percentage of anti-fighter ships than normal, since dogfighting is the most common role for fighters, and your ships will have to take up the slack.

PS:
I would certainly be interested to know how a carrier-less empire fares in the mod. It should not be significantly more difficult than playing normally; you'll have more trouble with balancing fleet compositions (since you'll need to build whole new ships to change it), but less trouble with logistics (since you won't have to restock your carriers after battle).

PPS:
Be sure to always have some troops present on all your colonies. You don't want to be an easy mark, and the AI will invade frequently.