SHIP CARRIERS!!

One thing you can try today is building a line (tight spacing) of military starbases with the +1 to movement upgrade on a beeline to your enemy.

How about fighters on carriers?

That's something I'd really like... fighter ships that are even smaller than the Tiny hulls, that would fit inside a "Carrier" -sized hull, which would be bigger than "Huge" hulls.

Basicaly I envision something like this:

1- You design your "Fighter"-sized hulls, They have a base of 2 or 3 hps and take only 1 or 2 logistic point. Maybe have 10-12 space on them - just enough for some weapons and armor.

2- You design your "Carrier"-sized hulls. They have less HPs than huge ships but have more space. They can also be equipped with a special module - Fighter Hangar. Those hangar "Add" logistic points to your fleets but only for fighter and tiny-sized hulls.

3- You group those ships togheter into a fleet.

4- The mechanics would need to make sure that the fighters and Tiny-sized hulls that fall within the carrier's "Logistic points" limit are not taken into account for speed and range - only the carrier is.

So basicaly, what this means is that Tiny and the new Fighter-class hulls would have 2 possible logistic points - either the "Regular" fleet logistic or the "Carrier" logistics. Or maybe just the fighter-class hulls would use those logistic points.

Of course, such a fleet could become very powerful (although also very expensive) as you build massive carriers that can carry dozens of fighter-class vessels. What happens then? Well, if the carrier is destroyed, the fighter-hulls can no longer be part of the fleet and since they don't fall within the "regular" fleet logistic, you can't group them up either, meaning they become sitting ducks (since they don't move fast, far or have that much armor/weapons)

That's how I see it anyway. I think it would rock

You can kind of simulate this by researching minaturization and logistics. Build one larger ship to act as the carrier and then lots of tiny hulled ships. You can build up the appearance of the larger hulled ship and keep the appearance of the tiny ones as bare-bones as possible. It is not quite the same, but I have tried it after reading another thread about carriers, and it at least looks kind of like a carrier group. I just keep all the movement and range values the same, and use an AWACs type sensor/cargo ship for recon outside the fleet. Pretty cool to see a massive looking ship with lots of tiny ships swarming all over, while fighting 4 medium hulled enemy ships. It is a visual work around but pretty cool, though not as effective as some of my other fleet strategies.

i dont think making them a seperate hull class would work as well as maybe making them another weapon such as missiles or something.

That's something I'd really like... fighter ships that are even smaller than the Tiny hulls, that would fit inside a "Carrier" -sized hull, which would be bigger than "Huge" hulls.

Basicaly I envision something like this:

1- You design your "Fighter"-sized hulls, They have a base of 2 or 3 hps and take only 1 or 2 logistic point. Maybe have 10-12 space on them - just enough for some weapons and armor.

2- You design your "Carrier"-sized hulls. They have less HPs than huge ships but have more space. They can also be equipped with a special module - Fighter Hangar. Those hangar "Add" logistic points to your fleets but only for fighter and tiny-sized hulls.

3- You group those ships togheter into a fleet.

4- The mechanics would need to make sure that the fighters and Tiny-sized hulls that fall within the carrier's "Logistic points" limit are not taken into account for speed and range - only the carrier is.

So basicaly, what this means is that Tiny and the new Fighter-class hulls would have 2 possible logistic points - either the "Regular" fleet logistic or the "Carrier" logistics. Or maybe just the fighter-class hulls would use those logistic points.

Of course, such a fleet could become very powerful (although also very expensive) as you build massive carriers that can carry dozens of fighter-class vessels. What happens then? Well, if the carrier is destroyed, the fighter-hulls can no longer be part of the fleet and since they don't fall within the "regular" fleet logistic, you can't group them up either, meaning they become sitting ducks (since they don't move fast, far or have that much armor/weapons)

That's how I see it anyway. I think it would rock

I was thinking that the existing small hulls would be the fighters, and there would be a new massive hull class with very low hit points, and each 'carrier bay' module you added would take up a space equivalent to the hull size you want to store in it. Maybe even have the option of adding many small bays or one large one, effectively creating a fighter carrier, or a 'fast moving shell' for a slow moving battle cruiser. I would say that ships onboard a carrier are using 0 logistic points and are completely vulnerable should the carrier be destroyed, but can be 'unloaded' from the carrier and fleeted up normally at the destination. This might require less work from a developers point of view as well.
Other thoughts? Developer input regarding feasibility?

Thanks!
Jeff K

Also, it would be nice to have an overall larger possible logistics rating to allow for larger fleet battles, but thats nit-picky and off topic.

IMO the carrier concept doesn't really fit the GalCiv2 model and really isn't necessary. It's not that complicated to build fast ships that can cover crazy amounts of sectors and still have plenty of firepower. Carriers don't really fit into the fleet and logistics model of GC either.

It would also be a lot of hassle to code up the AI to build and/or use them, deal with them, and/or prioritize them as targets. Coding AI to deal with one specialized ship type isn't as efficient as tweaking it to deal with ships that have more common elements and behaviors.

I would guess it'll be something they'll consider for a full blown expansion. Carriers would have to come with severe penalties to balance them. Things like it would take a turn to load and a turn to unload (unload should have a penalty at the least), they'd have to be very vulnrable, if destroyed all their cargo would be destroyed, they'd require a mid-range tech for the carrier hull/module, miniaturization wouldn't benefit them (since they're storing other ships and you can't shrink your cargo!), and of course, they'd be insanely expensive to build.

I dunno, I think the ship carrier idea fits well.....why build 100 engines into 50 ships that are all going to use them for the exact same trip? Any while it may be easy enough to build multipurpose ships (fast and powerful), it strategically makes sense to specialize. It also creates a new fun strategic decision: should i save space for weapons on my fighters, and accept that they are crippled without a carrier, or make them all slightly less powerful but able to get around individually? In a real world scenarion I think ship carriers would exists as well.
I agree the AI programming would take some effort, and I also agree completely with the required drawbacks you mentioned (i.e. very weak hull for carrier, etc). I think if you play enough on Gigantic maps, you will see the benefit of having a single fast ship able to transport multiple smaller ships from one corner of the galaxy to the other.

Argh, double post and I can't edit my second one... sorry ya'll

Anyway. No no no, I don't want to have crippled carriers that are glorified cargo ships, I want CARRIERS!

I'm just thinking back to MOO2 here. Remember how you could put Bomber and Fighter pods on your ship, turning them into carriers?

I'm just saying: Carriers shouldn't be limited in terms of capabilities. They should have their weakness:
- inherent price - while the carrier itself might not cost anymore than a battleship, it doesn't have any real "punch" and needs to be filled with smaller fighters which all need to be built themselves.
- Once the carrier is blown up, the fighters it carried (please, no battleship carrier, doesn't make sense) are pretty much stranded in space, lacking the ability to fleet up (since they use a different logistic point pool which is always provided by the carrier they are fleeted with) and thus, lacking speed, range and combined firepower.
- Carriers will have less weapons and less armor if you want it to carry more fighters. In essence, you could create "Strike carriers" that carry less but also have adequate offensive and deffensive powers or "Battle carriers" that only have a minimal amount of weaponry, mostly deffensive stuff and lots of cargo space.
- Carriers themselves would take up a lot of logistics (say 8-10 points)

And strenghts:
1- Carriers can obviously be very strong, since they let you have much large fleet (made up of weaker ships, but still. Zergling tactics)
2- You can design the fighters it carries!
3- Not only do they let you have large fleets, but they also let you specialise your fighters into more powerful ships that don't need engine, life support or sensors.

Now, counter-arguements
Miniaturization should influence the size of the hangar - it implies that the support equipment gets smaller. The physical capacity stays the same but say, the machine shop becomes smaller.

It -is- complicated to make ships that move hella fast and carry lots of firepower. It takes a long time to research enough miniaturisation and high-tech weapons/engines to fit your ships with. Carriers would thus need to be in the early phases of the tech tree. (they would still be viable later on - no matter how small, more engines takes up more space)

Carrier fighters should use a smaller hull than tiny. Why? Because tiny ships still have enough place to include engine, weapons and armor in decent quantity. Carrier fighters must not be able to - they aren't meant to be able to fly very far from a home base. Also, they need to be weaker than tiny hulls. More so, using tiny hulls you can have a wholy different logistic pool without having to fuddle with regular "tiny" hull's logistic point. Less problems!

If carriers are destroyed, it will be in battle, and their "cargo" won't be destroyed as well since it is most likely to be out there flying around during a battle. Of course, their range would be -very- limited so you'd need to auto-pilot them back to your territory.

There. Now bend to my will and accept the fact that this wouldn't be imbalanced and just darn cool!

Thanks for the original great idea Jeffk965

I have constructed a "carrier" complete with launch bay and "fighters", but it was all eye candy--not functional, but it looked great. The fighters were made by the smallest version of two types of ship jewelry--the one that looks like an old fashioned shuttlecraft from Star Trek, and the other looks like some kind of a trucated colonial fighter from Battlestar Galactica. (Search through the jewelry--you'll see which ones I mean). The landing strip in the bay can be made by the long flat hull peices laid side by side.

This would be interesting. Good suggestions here people.

With the current battle system they have, I don't see much of a point in having carriers.

If something like carriers are to be implemented, the dev could probably just do animation.

Instead of putting a laser cannon on your ship, you would have the choice of putting a laser fighter bay. In cinematics, the fighter bay would launch little fighter jets that shoot laser instead.

Otherwise, same functionality. Really, if the battle system is like this and doesn't have tactical combat, something like carriers and fighters don't really fit in.

I really like Gui-Jay's idea of carriers. It will be really cool and realistic. I think the carrier should provide some repairing to the fighters as well.
The current implementation give small fighters too much speed and range. Maybe the engine and life support module should be made bigger?

yeah the range and speed should be decreased, imagine huge carriers carrying small & tiny ships & other huge attack ships that go far away in enemy territory.. that s what huge ships are for anyway, they have a huge crew & a repair bay, medic, beds, kitchens.. How is a tiny or a small ship supposed to go far away on its own ? what about fuel, food, rest.. ? that's why only big & huge ships should have access to big range modules.. and all those modules could have some maintenance to pay, a hangar that build & repair ships would be very expensive of course..

And I don't think you can use ships that are smaller than tiny, it make no sense, tiny is already a 1 man ship..

An easier mechanic to implement, over seperate logistics points for "carrier" hulls, would be just to implement a "fighter bay" ship module that would function similar to a standard weapon mount. You'd have your three weapon choices, and the fighters would otherwise be unshielded/unarmored (you gotta figure they're too small to carry much more than short-range engines and a single weapon of choice) and completely dependant on the carrier's survival for their own survival.

Hence in combat, the carrier itself would show up, but it would "fire" its fighters at the enemy ships once, or until a fighter is destroyed (and another is launched to take its place), but instead of the fighters impacting against the hull like normal weapons, they simply stay animated as pseudo-ships in the battle, each adding their firepower per turn as if the carrier itself were given multiple attacks per turn (one for each launched fighter, in addition to combining whatever standard weapons are mounted on its hull as one shot like normal).

Heck, they could even adapt such a system to accommodate disabling of enemy weapons, shields, etc during a prolonged battle to add further depth to the system, as it makes little sense that a ship with one hitpoint out of 80 left can still fire its weapons and power its shields and engines as if nothing else was wrong with it.

Well in late game, when huge ships are supposed to be used, weapons do a lot more damage so tiny ships get destroyed fast anyway... just think about a huge ship that act like a colony that only give like +5 military prod and nothing else and can stock in the hangar like 8 tiny ships, you can launch those ships into space and make a small fleet out of them or add them to the huge ship fleet to protect it.. and when you keep them in the hangar your huge ship goes faster...

I really wish Stardock added this carriers idea into the game.. the only problem I see with adding this into the game is making the AI use it right..