Make carriers great again!

[macegee]

With the new Hive Mind features, I really want to do a proper Formics/Buggers playthrough (Ender's Game). The problem is, the carrier fleets are currently under performing, very very badly. Please, devs, make them viable! Maybe even some unique bonuses to Hive (like "+X00% amount of strike craft") or something?

NOTE: I'm not asking for this feature specifically, no, just beg you to do something to make carrier-based fleets viable for anything other than Role Playing.

Also, currently, strike craft's damage does not show up in combat reports (only amount of strike craft destroyed), so there's that too.

 

[Jerev]

A speed boost for the fighters would be nice. After I researched some repeteable techs, which do just that, the bombers and fighters were much more useful. I always use some carriers in my bigger fleets, because I think that they should be part of every scifi universe.

 

[Milten]

Maybe even some unique bonuses to Hive (like "+X00% amount of strike craft") or something?

No. Just no. Ethics related bonuses to specific kinds of weapon is not the way.

 

[Alblaka]

No. Just no. Ethics related bonuses to specific kinds of weapon is not the way.

To be fair, Hivemind + Strikecraft is pretty much THE ethic where a specific-weapon-bonus makes sense.
And whilst I would certainly like to see a general rework of latter, I wouldn't mind making it a tool even more effective to former.

 

[Exarian]

Strikecafts are ATM crap, just as useless as missiles. There are multiple reasons:
- They are slow, unlike real-world naval fighters, they are not striking first - they are striking last, after all X, L and most of M weapons fire...
- They cannot replenish in battle, which mean Your carriers are useless vs against any kind of PD.
- Point Defense is too efficient vs strikecrafts


Last time we have seen large naval battles with battle cruisers and carriers:
- carriers were able to engage enemy fleet via airplanes far beyond the range of any battlecruiser
- aircraft casualties to Point Defense were relatively low, escorted by destroyers BB Yamato was sank by aircrafts with minimal American casualties (~10 planes)
- natural counter to bombers and fighters were own fighters
- Carriers were holding multiple squadrons, deploying and reloading/refueling them for entire battle

None of these interactions takes place in Stellaris. Fighters engage range is limited. Limited range with slow speed makes strikecrafts the last weapon able to fire at enemy fleet. Point Defense is massacring strikecrafts, making own fighter screen unneeded. On top of that each hangar bay is holding one, non-replenishable, squadron only, effectively turning your carriers to one-barrel riffles. Seriously, strikecrafts are at the same, useless, level as missiles.

Basically carriers in Stellaris are inferior to carriers in WW2 in many aspects - and making them useful require returning WW2 fighter-bomber-carrier-battlecruiser-PD interactions.



Making strikecrafts specifically good for Hive Minds should not be excuse for keeping them useless for everyone else.

 

[macegee]

Making strikecrafts specifically good for Hive Minds should not be excuse for keeping them useless for everyone else.

Sorry if I mislead anyone. Wasn't implying that I'm trying to ask for hivemind specific feature. Just thinking out loud. All the talks about Hive mind reminded me how much I wanna do carrier-heavy fleets and how badly they currently perform.

Yeah, I just want carrier-based fleets to be viable for something other than Role Playing. They really need some serious changes.

 

[Name already in use]

I thought about this for a long time and this thread seems the right one to post my suggestions into.

A possibility to make Carriers viable:

1. Make Fighters/Bombers separate Ships with extremely high evasion and no FTL.

• They will not be destroyed when the carrier bites the dust.
• They provide effective screening and draw enemy weapon fire.
• With ca.100 base evasion they can be hit by small weapons. But they'll always be a one-hit, so it's not overpowered.
  
• They can can carry out orders and engage independently of the carrier. (like it is used in RL... noone sends the carrier in enemy gun range)
• Carriers can replenish fighters, since they themselves are not engaged.

2. Increase the Numbers of Fighters. Currently you only get 4 per slot. This makes it very easy to simply eradicate them... You can't swarm someone if you`re outnumbered,
especially if they outgun you.

3. Optional: Make a additional Carrier-Shipclass as Dedicated Carriers.

• These would provide MASSIVE amounts of Hangar slots and would be able to act as a independent fleet but easily overwhelmed by a real fleet in direct combat.
  
• These could combat the Doomstack problem, since you could use more of these simultaneously in mutliple enemy systems.
• A DOOMstack can't be everywhere and the Fighters could buy the carrier enough time to flee from direct engagement.
• This would make it necessary to prevent them from beeing added into a real Fleet -> independent ship type like constructors or science ships.

I would like to know what you guys think of these Ideas. Especially if a Dev stumbled upon this.

​

 

[Ogi-Nollox]

Forget about carriers or missiles in this game. This game is about big ships with big guns. Makes no sense in real life, but in this game ww1 style battleship can shoot Nimitz class carrier (330 km combat range) even before carrier planes have taken off. So to make any sort of carrier or missile cruiser viable they need to reduce both range on ALL guns and ship combat movement speed by at least 5x times. Not going to happen.

 

[Exarian]

Forget about carriers or missiles in this game. This game is about big ships with big guns. Makes no sense in real life, but in this game ww1 style battleship can shoot Nimtz class carrier (330 km combat range) even before carrier planes have taken off. So to make any sort of carrier or missile cruiser viable they need to reduce range on ALL guns and ship combat movement speed by at least 5x times. Not going to happen.

There are other ways of fixing fighters:

1. First of all, fighters need to replenish in battle. Every few days each destroyed strikecraft should be respawned on carrier, thus making destroying carrier key to cut enemy fighter support - like real naval combat.
2. Carriers should be able to use catapults (like BS:G), allowing to deploy squadrons much closer to enemy fleet. It can be implemented as huge (500%) fighter speed bonus for first ~5 days after spawning in hangar
3. Fighters should be able to engage enemy in entire gravity well, no matter of carrier position (AKA unlimited engagement range). If fighters are only part of fleets engaged in battle, fleets can freely fly in gravity wells, effectively playing "mouse and cat".

With these 3 changes we have carrier combat much closer to WW2

Then, we may adjust numbers:

- Possible fighters speed buff
- Possible PD nerf (also related to missiles)
- Squadron size & evasion & damage & survivability adjustements


fixing strikecrafts is possible

 

[Alblaka]

1. First of all, fighters need to replenish in battle. Every few days each destroyed strikecraft should be respawned on carrier, thus making destroying carrier key to cut enemy fighter support - like real naval combat.

I'm pretty sure having effective AA to shoot down enemy fighters is much more effective then trying to get the carrier far out of range. In real naval combat.

The only difference here is that shooting down a fighter jet with current means of AA is MUCH more difficult then Stellaris PD eating strikecraft (and missiles) for breakfeast.

 

[Name already in use]

I beg to differ.

1. Building Fighters DURING combat does not really make sense... this will result in a glorified tower defense minigame for the PD, after the first wave got eliminated. Having bigger Squadrons that are replenished/repaired outside of combat makes more sense... only because the fighters do engage does not mean the carrier has to attack by himself. Splitting Fighters from Carriers and making them separate ships that depend on each other makes more sense for realism purpose. It also encourages to keep the carrier itself out of direct combat.
2. Not a problem with that, I love BSG and catapults like that are already in use on real carriers. (else there wouldn't be enough space to start a jet)
3. If you want your carrier stuck in a system because your fighters engage every single mining station, until they are destroyed... go for it. Personally that would prevent me from using Fighters alltogether. Beeing able to command the fighters like fleets and sending them anywhere in the Gravity well sounds a little bit easier to endure. ;D

As far as I know Stellaris does not take place in WW2 and Carriers do not always have to follow our expectations... in the end its Wiz who is in charge.

-You're right, a speed buff seems necessary

- PD doesn't need a nerf, they just need to NOT prioritise Fighters above all else. Missiles just need to not suck anymore. (due to overkill you will almost need no PD to
kill a missile fleet.... and they definitely need a buff against armor and shields, as higher range to make them viable. they should be OP without the PD counter)

-yes, definitely. 4 Fighters er squad are comically low compared to the sheer amount of corvettes that usually make up fleets... corvettes are currently the better fighters.

I agree on a lot of your suggestions, but I still think, fighters should become their own ship type, not glorified missiles.

EDIT: This is an answer to Exarians Post. ... Sorry, its my second Post on this Forum, I still have to learn hoe to quote ​

 

[Almond_Brown]

Strikecafts are ATM crap, just as useless as missiles. There are multiple reasons:
- They are slow, unlike real-world naval fighters, they are not striking first - they are striking last, after all X, L and most of M weapons fire...
- They cannot replenish in battle, which mean Your carriers are useless with against any kind of PD.
- Point Defense is too efficient vs strikecrafts


Last time we have seen large naval battles with battle cruisers and carriers:
- carriers were able to engage enemy fleet via airplanes far beyond the range of any battlecruiser
- aircraft casualties to Point Defense were relatively low, escorted by destroyers BB Yamato was sank by aircrafts with minimal American casualties (~10 planes)
- natural counter to bombers and fighters were own fighters
- Carriers were holding multiple squadrons, deploying and reloading/refueling them for entire battle

None of these interactions takes place in Stellaris. Fighters engage range is limited. Limited range with slow speed makes strikecrafts the last weapon able to fire at enemy fleet. Point Defense is massacring strikecrafts, making own fighter screen unneeded. On top of that each hangar bay is holding one, non-replenishable, squadron only, effectively turning your carriers to one-barrel riffles. Seriously, strikecrafts are at the same, useless, level as missiles.

Basically carriers in Stellaris are inferior to carriers in WW2 in many aspects - and making them useful require returning WW2 fighter-bomber-carrier-battlecruiser-PD interactions.

Making strikecrafts specifically good for Hive Minds should not be excuse for keeping them useless for everyone else.

Even modern Carrier Fleets do not replenish their Planes themselves once in the War theater. Loses are replenished by sending new units to place controlled by that army/navy and then flown to the carriers as replacements. How do you propose a Carrier, while deep in enemy territory, during a War replace its StrikeCraft? Build them on the Carriers themselves on Site? Craziness.

 

[Sinister2202]

There should be small, medium, large and xlarge hangars. Larger the hangar, more fighters the ship can shoot out. And obviously, the capital ship modules should have access to large or xlarge hangars. But at the current state of fighters and bombers, I don't know if small or medium would be useful in the first place.

 

[Exarian]

Even modern Carrier Fleets do not replenish their Planes themselves once in the War theater. Loses are replenished by sending new units to place controlled by that army/navy and then flown to the carriers as replacements. How do you propose a Carrier, while deep in enemy territory, during a War replace its StrikeCraft? Build them on the Carriers themselves on Site? Craziness.

How many aircrafts are stationing on carrier? Modern Nimitz have 90 aircrafts. Is this carrier able to deploy all aircrafts at once? No way, many of them are stationing below the flight deck.

In WW2 Carriers were using same method of transporting aircrafts. No carrier was able to deploy all it's fighters at once. Fighters/bombers were launched for entire battle, some of them were returning to refuel, some were returning to rearm. I've never heard of "mid-battle empty carrier" scenario.

CARRIER IS NOT MISSILE LAUNCHER - It do not launch all its fighters then escape because of no other use.

I am not suggesting "respawning fighters" because I wish to put "fighter factories" on ships, I suggest that, because it is best way of emulating real carriers behavior in battle.
Yes, we can choose "longer road" - add fully operational flight deck to carrier, with complicated launch-return-refuel mechanic to fighters - but at Stellaris scale of battles all these complicated and CPU-consuming calculations will give us something barely noticeable in combat.

"Respawning fighters" are giving carriers same tactical role as real carriers have. I've also never heard of aircraft carrier which run out of airplanes in mid-battle...

It is complete opposite of Stellaris, where carrier flight deck is empty after first seconds of battle.


BTW. If we are talking of SciFi, Battlestars of Mercury class had on-board Fighters Factories It's also common in other games, like Sins of a Solar Empire, Starcraft, Star Trek Online

 

[Repeats]

Fixes for missiles and carriers in my mind:

1. Remove PD from the game. It is stupid to have a hard counter to 1/3 of the types of damage. If you don't remove PD, then give hard counters to lasers and kinetics to balance (ie ability to nullify all damage of each type with specific tech).
2. Each tech level of missiles/strike craft should increase the move speed of each
3. Each repeatable tech for missile and strike craft attack speed should also increase move speed
4. Allow missiles and strike craft to re-target after the original target dies

Having 0 communication from the devs since 1.4 about the missile/strike craft issue is troubling. Makes me wonder if there is any fixes/balance coming in 1.5 on the issue.

 

[Emraldis]

Fixes for missiles and carriers in my mind:

1. Remove PD from the game. It is stupid to have a hard counter to 1/3 of the types of damage. If you don't remove PD, then give hard counters to lasers and kinetics to balance (ie ability to nullify all damage of each type with specific tech).
2. Each tech level of missiles/strike craft should increase the move speed of each
3. Each repeatable tech for missile and strike craft attack speed should also increase move speed
4. Allow missiles and strike craft to re-target after the original target dies

Having 0 communication from the devs since 1.4 about the missile/strike craft issue is troubling. Makes me wonder if there is any fixes/balance coming in 1.5 on the issue.

point defense isn't supposed to hard counter, it's supposed to be a damage mitigation factor (shooting down a percentage of incoming damage). Unfortunately, with the way it works, it makes you completely immune to incoming missiles and strike craft.

 

[Artigo]

Fixes for missiles and carriers in my mind:

1. Remove PD from the game. It is stupid to have a hard counter to 1/3 of the types of damage. If you don't remove PD, then give hard counters to lasers and kinetics to balance (ie ability to nullify all damage of each type with specific tech).
2. Each tech level of missiles/strike craft should increase the move speed of each
3. Each repeatable tech for missile and strike craft attack speed should also increase move speed
4. Allow missiles and strike craft to re-target after the original target dies

1. You don't make a combat system more interesting by making it rock vs rock. In any game you play, buffs > nerfs. Buffs are always more fun. In my mind, missiles should have the highest damage potential, with the chance of them being completely nullified by PD. That is infinitely more interesting then kinetics vs energy/armor vs shields. That said, PD is too effective in the current model.
2. Maybe overkill, but the biggest thing is your last point.
3. See 2
4. Missiles should absolutely by able to re-target after target is destroyed. This is kind of what makes them stand separate from the aforementioned munitions. Smart projectiles change the dynamic

Also, can I please have more than 4 slots for fighter craft?

 

[Exarian]

Missiles retargeting might be game engine issue. Easiest way of limiting overkill is drastically increasing missiles speed (+100% or even +200%). It will not eliminate overkill, but will reduce it to acceptable level (it is still not enough to make missiles useful, but it will at least eliminate one of biggest problems)

 

[Artigo]

Missiles retargeting might be game engine issue.

Likely. Speed boost could help remedy the issue and/or adding AOE effects would also help make them viable.

 

[Exarian]

Likely. Speed boost could help remedy the issue and/or adding AOE effects would also help make them viable.

And if AoE is not possible because of engine too, drastic range increase will give missiles required niche.

By "drastic" I mean increasing range of S missiles to 70, M missiles to 100 and L missiles to 140. Swarm missile should get same range boost as M missiles, and their range should be set to 80. It will give missiles of each category same or better range then weapons from upper weight category, effectively turning missiles into long-range snipe tool.


Please go back to carriers, there are a lot of missile threads already