It wouldnt be a "few lines of code". Or if it was, you would end up having carriers with no ships swarming around your homeplanet. You know like they already do with freightors. If your going to attack someone else talking about coding, you should do alittle first. AI development is extremely hard when your trying to get it to do something "right". How would it use the carriers? When would it build them? Would they be in fleets of them selves or with other ships? Would you just try to make 1 bigger carrier with more of these "transport modules

I still don't understand why you're concentrating on this, as any new feature is going to require coding into the AI to use it. That's what you pay for in an expansion pack, and if the carrier was implemented in the manner I suggested, I don't see why it would be a big deal. How is this any different than the AI building a troop transport or a battleship? These are all decisions it has to make as it stands.

agree, its going to die super easy. But you also forgot that now the tiny fires back. Also if you have alot of tinys the bigger ships cant kill them all fast enough. The cost of the tiny is 1/3 or less. Meaning if i lose 3 tinys to 1 or more of your huges i win. I can replace my ships faster then you.

Not necessarily. I have planets late game that can crank out a huge in one turn, or I can use buy it now if my economy can support it, which it usually can at that point. I could easily have a fleet with a large number of huges in it, and they'll kill every single one of your ships without me taking many losses. I've seen it happen vs. the Drengin many times, as they have a tendency to build smalls with high railgun ratings and put them in large fleets the times I've played them. If all of those ships fire and they each kill a small ship, it's not going to be long before they're overwhelmed. It's going to take all those smalls firing together and possibly more than one turn to bring down even a single huge ship.

Also its not very hard to build a small with 50/20 with no lifesupport or engines. Both of these components are very very big for the small hulls practicly 1/5-1/4 the entire space when you put a few on.

I don't think you can just gloss over engines the way you are. It's not going to be able to do much good in a planetary defense fleet, and it'll never catch up with anything that has even a single hyperdrive on it.

What difficulty are you playing on that you can create a fleet that can fly over the entire map and still dominate? I mean thats like 50-100 moves atleast. I usualy dont go far above 20 and even that makes my ships abit weaker.

I play on Intelligent, or whatever the setting is that has a fully enabled AI. I never need to send a fleet across the map in the first place usually, just need enough to get me to the first few planets in enemy territory, then I can start "planet hopping."

1)If carriers exsist as your saying would you use them to the point where your hardly building other ships? If so, your just replacing one aspect of the game with another, no more depth to it was added.

No, I wouldn't. The whole point of a carrier is that it needs to be defended by larger ships. That's how they function in current naval combat, as you will never find a carrier by itself, unattended by destroyers. It's strong on power projection, but it's so slow it needs other ships to take care of its defense. I'm not saying that it ought to be completely defenseless, but if the carrier is its own hull class, it should be less capable than a standard huge hull.

2)Will the AI be able to reasonable be able to use it? Obviosly it cant use it perfectly, but just enough to piss you off. If not, you just gained another edge up on the computor, do you really need it?

This isn't about me gaining an advantage over the computer. If I can beat it with what I have available now, why does it matter? The first issue about the AI using it I've already addressed many times. Can the computer use anything "perfectly?"

But even this is kidna lame and changes the mechanics alot. People say the want the carrier to be able to do "lightning" strikes, and that they want it to be realistic to our present RL carriers. Well then it would be slow...it count build ships... and if somehow there was a "stealth" bomber or a sub, its fucked, and all the planes and the carrier dies

I don't see these massive changes in gameplay mechanics people seem to be fearing. There are no subs or stealth bombers in this game, so that's a moot point, and in "real life," a sub or stealth bomber would not be able to get anywhere near to a carrier without being shot down or sunk by the ships that are guarding it. You would have to take them out first, or use jet fighters that are quick enough to evade the defenders to attack it, and even then sinking it is no guarantee, but I digress. I haven't seen anything about lightning strikes, and as a matter of fact, most of the other posts I've read have been in favor of it being slow.

I'm not trying to argue with you, just genuinely unsure as to why you, or anyone else who oppose carries believe this is such a terrible idea.

There are now people already finding things a little boring (heroine4life, you actually gave some good advice there), but they won't be the only ones to go if there aren't going to be some serious new additions to the game fairly soon. The whole carrier concept is cool and would open up new tactical choices for the player. In a world where everyone wants more, you want less? Bigger, better, faster, harder, louder!

I agree with this completely, and believe that it's an excellent summary of this thread.