Carriers worth the cost ?

yeah, they're worth it. cruiser carriers on the other hand aren't really worth it. they should be able to carry two wings, and have their cost and supply increased slightly to compensate.

the capital carriers are usefull in combination with a huge fleet of frigate carriers cause they add bonusses to the huge fleet of bombers u have then.

also keep the cap ship and bombers in the middle and send the frigate carriers in circels around the edge of the gravity well keeping them out of harms way and pumpin bombers into the battle.

do make sure u have more than just cap ships to keep the enemy busy and away from ur carriers, and keep the battle in the middle of the gravitywell.

if u play it right their allmost invincible

What ratio of fighters/Bombers do you use on this carrier fleet ?
What bonuses are you talking about for the bombers ?


Thanks

Carriers simply dont carry enough squds at the beginning and mid game you'll have cruisers to replace carriers.

The support abilitys are kinda lame too.

so no, carriers are free xp for your enemy.
And their main weapon is negated by bunch of flak frigs so....

Nonsense

Imo one of the best capital ships in the game is a carrier.. The Advent Carry is a monster.. Not only does it nice damage by it self later on with upgrades and level.. But you can't beat anima which with abilities can raise up to 10+ per squadron, along with energy aura.. Which when maxed out will decrease cool down by 22%.. It starts getting rediculous late game where you start seeing Illuminators doing 25 damage a hit..

Just a thought.
Wouldn't it be better to just build cruiser carriers instead of a Sova and use the Cap slot for another powerful cap ship ?

10 to 15 Percherons (light carrier) would give you a bigger air wing than 1 Sova (quicker to get that wing too) and still leave you with a Cap slot for a Kol or Marza

Three Words.

Missle Battery Spam.

Kills AI's dead. Sucks in multi-player though, so go with Kol and Marza instead.

In addition to the the fire power of missles and fighters already mentioned my fav. ability of the Sova is Embargo

"Steals income from the planet's production, slows construction of ships and structures, and denies enemy civilian merchant ships from leaving the gravity well."

It's nice to park a Sova in resource occupied system while you're dismantling it....

A Sova is no direct combat ship...
However, embargo is useful if you can reach the enemy homeworld.
Missile Batteries are good vs light frigs and fighters are good vs LRMs, which I like as an advantage in early engagements.

Fighters on a mid level Sova are also useful for countering enemy fighters in fleets and hangar defenses.

The ultimate is not that great, but not bad either. If you go all fighters the Sova with its ultimate can be all anti strike craft power you need vs anything but massed carriers.

The Kol is just a ship with a bit more fire power and staying power, but it offers nothing which normal ships cant do just as cost effective.
A Sova can replace your complete anti fighter duties most of the time and it has Embargo which while not mind boggling is still neat.

Is there any way to see how much damage your fighers/ bombers are good for? Part of my ambiguity on squadrons is not knowing how useful they are.

5x means 5 bombers per squad.

if you zoom in till you can see the fighters/bombers themselves and then hover the mouse above them, you can see the stats.

the damage displayed there is incorrect as many other dps figures displayed ingame or on infocards.
e.g. vasari bomber does 5.7 dps, advent bomber does 2.53 dps

Halycon class Carriers are a must have for any advent fleet. It has two amazing passive abilities which mean it almost always has enough antimatter for both the really good telekinesis attack and its ultimate skill.

Telekinesis destroys all their fighters so they have no defense against a swarm of bombers that has far more ships than usual AND does far more damage. It's also a very strong ship offensively with plenty of lasers mounted on it.

It's been pointed out that capital ships gain much of their usefulness from abilities as they level up. Carriers would seem to be at a fundamental disadvantage if they don't gain experience from damage inflicted by their fighter wings. If fighter-inflicted damage doesn't translate into carrier exp, then carriers level up more slowly, and are therefore limited. Granted, it would be pretty awesome if you could get one to a really high level, but I honestly don't see it happening.

are one race's squadrens better than others?

capital ships gain experience from any enemy/structure destroyed in the gravity well, they don't have to damage it.
the experience reward is divided amongst your capital ships.

Once hitting a ship from the sides and rear do more damage carriers will be more powerful. Jump in system, drop bombers/fighters while they are fighting the rest of your fleet, watch their ships engines go nuclear.

::shrug:: But I guess until then you'll just have to abuse them as they are! Haha

I don't think sides-rear doing more damage necessarily makes sense against some ships: Many TEC ships fight with broadsides rather than head-on. In fact, I think only Kols fight head-on, every other ship I've seen seems to turn broadside when attacking. Several Vasari ships fight better at an oblique, and the Advent carriers also seem to do better broadside or oblique also.

Carriers can be very usefull, just don't use them as frontline units. They make excellent support ships, and I often have a small group of carriers/cruiser carriers acting as a support group for incursions inside my Empire or to reinforce chokepoints. The best advantage there is speed, since the fighters can cross the gravity well and into the fight much faster than most conventional ships. Usually enough to tip the balance in my favour, against the AI anyway.

In my personal opinion, carriers are absolutely essential if you're playing as the Vasari. I always have a bunch of them running around if I'm Vasari. For the Advent, I find them to be ok, but nothing special until they get leveled up quite a bit. When it comes to TEC, I do think their carrier is a waste of money. I, too, run around with Kol's and Dunov's just like when I play as Vasari I run around with their equivalent to the Kol (I forget its name) and their carrier (I forget its name too). Carriers appear to be more or less useful depending on the race you're playing as.

Of course, this is just the way I play. Carriers do always make excellent empire-defense ships though. Their interceptor fighters/bombers get into the action fast.

Marza's are I know have front mounted weapons (I think thats all they have).

I always take carriers. They either provide much needed strikecraft for fleets w/o Carrier cruisers, or supplement a carrier cruisers fleet. They can so-so direct damage, but thats not what they are there for. I']d be interested to know what their dps is when you factor in their strikecraft. I would assume they are on par with other ships. Logically they would be the best bang fot the buck in the game dps wise.

Heres the problem. You buy them for strike craft...and @ level 1 they look like a crappy deal.

You can get a Cap Carrier for 3k Credits, 400 metal, and 200+ crystal and 50 supply and 1 cap supply (which is expensive early) for 2 squads of strike craft.

or

buy a cruiser carrier for 400 ish gold 110ish metal and 90ish crystal for 1 squad of strikecraft.

Obviously the carrier looks like a rip off, since your really looking for strikecraft options. You don't see that the carriers have kickass abiities for the most part, and can house 3 times the amount of strikecraft squads with experience.

Every Cap ship fills a role, and the carriers fill thiers nicely. I have been toying with getting one as my 2nd ship, as the early caps are your OG's, being nice and beefy (xp wise) when the crap hits the fan.

1 squadron is enough for them.

See, a Level 6 Halcyon/Skirantra/Sova carries 5 squadrons and takes 50 supply points + 1 capital ship slot.

6 cruiser-sized light carriers carry 6 squadrons and take 48 supply points. They trade off the extra abilities of the capital carriers with an extra squadron, a free capital slot, and 2 supply points less. The cost comes to about equal since they're cheaper in cash but pricier in resources.

6 light carriers also have the advantage in that they can replace strike craft losses faster than a single capital carrier because they have 6 fighter/bomber factories operating instead of 1, and a larger collective antimatter reserve. Also, they do not need battle-hardening while capital carriers must be Leveled up to L6 for all their abilities to come into play, and since carriers of any kind will be operating behind the front line or at the edge of the gravity well, the cap carriers' guns don't matter all that much.



Yes. The Advent have the best fighter and bomber squadrons early and in mid-game, but in late game with high tech, the Vasari easily have the best fighter squadrons and Vasari bomber squadrons are slightly ahead of their Advent equivalent.

With the Vasari maximizing their Phase Missile, Wave Cannon, Hull, and Armor techs, and the Advent maximizing their Beam, Laser, Hull, and Shield techs, Vasari fighters will be quicker, tougher and better at dogfighting and strafing, while the Advent fighters will be more numerous and better at bomber interception. The Vasari bombers would be faster, tougher, and be able to shoot through shields, while the Advent bombers would be more numerous and would deal more raw damage to their target.

With base specifications and no technology bonuses, the Advent and Vasari fighters would be about equal in dogfighting, but the Advent fighters would be better at strafing scout/long-range/siege ships and intercepting bombers. Without tech bonuses, the Advent bombers would easily be the best.

TEC squadrons wouldn't be the best at anything in either situation, but if they manage to tech up faster thanks to better economy, they could be stronger in the mid-game for a while until their rivals also research up their trees.

Advent Carrier spam is win against any AI. The Halcyon push away fighters is simply amazing hahahahaha

Last game I played 2 humans against 4 hard AI locked I only used carriers. Result:



Oh most frigates i lost where early game light frigates i think I lost 5-10 frone host during that whole game.

I thought phase missiles and armor were the only things that would improve for the Vasari fighter/bombers. Which always annoyed me, because you can only get the 20% damage bonus on phase missiles, and it takes a lot of pre-reqs to get there. I've had games as Advent where I'm frustrated beyond belief that the enemy's phase missiles seem to be acing my hull, but even when I missile swarm as Vassari I rarely notice a huge boon to the phasic missiles. If fighters use wave, that would make me very happy.

Also, the Vasari carrier's abilities are really quite nice. The ability to phase out squads is really handy, the extra units per squad gets to be a nice bonus, but most of all, the repair ability it has is just amazing. You can literally tank a single battleship against an apocalyptic invasion if you have the repair ability maxed, and it will easily tilt battles in your favor in the beginning of the game. The fact that it regens all units in the area of effect can be put to amazingly good use. I like it a lot more than Dunolv, which is usually the very first thing I target in battle against TEC.

To add to this, I've done games where I just use Haylcon carriers as cap ships, and end up with like 10 of em because of thier usefullness.

The Adept anima passive ability, coupled with Acension (the xp raising one. It's 4 am, I can't think of the name) and the 4 bomber squads per (which is what I choose) means like 2, possibly 1 pass from bombers to kill off a level 5 or 6 cap ship with ease, uber ease.

Never, EVER, underestimate the Advent carrier.