How do I load fighters onto a capship?

[Lander1979]

Without the Carrier Mod, you can't dock fighters on a Carrier.

With the Carrier mod, Purchase the fighters you want, go to the Carriers Info Screen and click on the Defence Officer and go into the DO's Screen and select Comm to comm the DO, then select Carrier option and then Transfer to Carrier (will assign multiple fighters at once, no need to comm the fighters individually).

Then go to the carriers Info screen again, and you should see a list of the assigned fighters and their health (fighters assigned to the carrier will auto-repair when docked). Go to the DO's screen and comm the DO again, select Carrier, and Dock ships.

Note: If you install the Carrier Mod, you will have to build a new Carrier for the ships to be able to dock, as the mod only affects new assets, not existing ones.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Nanook: Skunk combat URV effectiveness are not a fair way to judge combat URVs in general as the numbers are far more constrained. I suspect you had 4 or less combat URVs in your test case and if so then I am not surprised by the results.

As far as the Skunk is concerned, I stick with ROVs and utility URVs (e.g. Shield Rechargers). Where my capitals are concerned, I load them up with a mix (as I have mentioned in other threads on this topic).

Yes, individual drones are fragile things but in sufficient numbers and in appropriate mixes they can be an effective tool (and may survive better too).

I do agree that Fighters individually can be more effective than a couple of combat URVs though.

[Vandragorax]

BTW has anyone managed to get the defence officer "Automatically restock drones and ammo" thing to work?

I can't figure it out. I tell him to auto restock drones, so I would have thought I could pick a number of each to 'hold' in stock. If he drops below this number for whatever reason, then next time he's in a zone with drones for sale, he should place an order and they be delivered either by flying through space to the ship or using those drop pod things which the player can now buy stuff with remotely.

But, it just seems to do nothing!

Anyone got any experience with this option? Thanks.

If I could keep my capitals loaded with 150 drones at all times, even if they get destroyed, with no extra effort on my part, then they are infinitely more worthwhile in my game than fighters for me personally.

[Ognjen85]

..
This 99999999 times.
Even if there was ability to load the carriers with fighters, I would still use drones because they are easy to replace.

Not my experience. To replace drones, you've got to be in sector and order the drones to be installed by the shipyard, wait for the ship to dock, get loaded and then undock before you can do anything with it. And that also assumes the shipyard has the drones in stock in the quantity and flavor you want.

Replacing fighters, OTOH, only requires you to talk to a dealer at the shipyard and you can instantly have as many fighters as he/she can sell you. Not sure how that's harder than the drone bit.

Can you equip carrier with drones via transfer ware option? I would expect you can, but am not 100% sure.

Anyway, once fighter drones get shielding option they will become interesting for me, till then, they are not worth imo.

Small fighters (when bought at shipyard) come with npc pilot so unless you want to replace pilot is not big deal... But then again they get left behind if carrier jumps somewhare.

[Scoob]

I quite like the use of Drones, even if it's still somewhat glitchy at times.

I do however find it odd that a civilian Rahanas can carry as many drones (150) as both a Light and Heavy Sul "Carrier". If the AI was smart enough to stay out of range and launch drones alone, ANY Freighter would make a fairly devastating combat platform.

Personally, I'd like to see both the Light and Heavy Sul gain extra drone bays, enabling them (lore-wise) to support extra drones in the field and facilitate faster repairs etc. The single "civlian" drone bay on a Freighter should be able to support just a basic wing at once, for example.

As for a Arawn, well, I'd LOVE to be able to fill one with EXPENSIVE fighters late game and have it deploy them intelligently - pilots are supposed to be smarter with grater survivability after all. Plus fighters are ace

It does seem, from what the modder Marvin Martian has found in his mod, that the Arawn was indeed designed to house fighters, but I suspect the feature was never finished. Personally, I look forward to the update that adds this - it'll not stop me packing my other ships with cheap, disposable and made by me drones though - there's room for BOTH on my ships

Scoob.

[Nanook]

@Nanook: Skunk combat URV effectiveness are not a fair way to judge combat URVs in general as the numbers are far more constrained. I suspect you had 4 or less combat URVs in your test case and if so then I am not surprised by the results....

Well, you suspect wrong. I had a full load of eight fighter drones, of various types, mostly MK II's. Mostly they bumped into me, hit me with their lasers and failed to kill any of the attackers, I think it's a pretty fair test. Also considering I can easily shoot down a small horde of them when being attacked, yet get owned by a half dozen fighters, I think that speaks volumes.

[Scoob]

After recent updates, I've noticed that fighters drones are waaaay better than they were. I mean, they used to simply launch (sans any enemies present) fly to the nearest highway and get lost! Now they're generally fairly effective, but oh so soft and squishy. They still bug out every so often, but generally they've improved in leaps and bounds.

I *only* use them on my cap ships, not the Skunk, so that experience may well be very different.

Scoob.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Nanook: Still not really surprised by the results, just only ever tried it with 4 or less myself. IME capital craft based combat drones tend to be more effective.

Perhaps the Smart Defence AI needs to be updated to be in-line with Defence Officer AI (presuming they are independently coded/scripted).

[wwdragon]

As for a Arawn, well, I'd LOVE to be able to fill one with EXPENSIVE fighters late game and have it deploy them intelligently - pilots are supposed to be smarter with grater survivability after all. Plus fighters are ace Smile

It does seem, from what the modder Marvin Martian has found in his mod, that the Arawn was indeed designed to house fighters, but I suspect the feature was never finished. Personally, I look forward to the update that adds this - it'll not stop me packing my other ships with cheap, disposable and made by me drones though - there's room for BOTH on my ships Smile

yeah. I would love to use the Arawn, IF It had a full compliment of heavy fighters/drones inside and could use them.

[Nanook]

@Nanook: Still not really surprised by the results, just only ever tried it with 4 or less myself. IME capital craft based combat drones tend to be more effective.....

They may be more effective than using them with the Skunk if you have a lot more of them, I don't know, but they certainly are not more effective than fighters. And that's the whole debate going on here. Players want the ability to carry fighters on their carriers because they are more effective, and cheaper in the long run because they die a lot less often. I've watched less than a dozen fighters easily tear apart a Titurel, for example, only losing one or two of their number, but I've never seen even a small horde of drones take one down without help from nearby stations.

When I tried something like that with the eight combat drones that I used to carry on the Skunk, they barely dented the shields of the Titurel before they were wiped out. And here I thought the main purpose of drones were to help the Skunk in combat since we weren't allowed to fly fighters or any other craft.

[Then there's the other whole debate about being able to fly drones from the Skunk. But that's a topic for another thread.]

[Aken_Bosch]

Why we should't talk about the awesome Assassin flyable drone...a paper plane armed with twin beans launcher, useful to repel bare-handed people in spacesuits...yes I agree, it's better not to talk about it...

About using combat drones with the Skunk, sending them to assault a capital is by far not the smartest thing to do...I think they weren't supposed to be used that way at all...instead I've found they are definitely useful as a fire support (albeit a bit too flimsy) and as a distraction while engaging small groups of fighters, I usually fly around with six of them ready to be launched if I happen to draw too much attention from too many gentlemen at once...I easily lose some of them, but they usually steal some of my kills, the ones armed with plasma repeaters make short work even of heavy fighters when they target one...

That said, fighters remain the best thing to use for defending and assaulting capitals...and the Arawn at least should definitely be able to carry a good complement of them...as they are now, fighters are utterly useless if they can't stay together with their commanding ship...

[Araknis]

This. Additionally, drones don't have shields and generally have weaker hulls. On the other hand, they have the dumbest flight AI in the whole game. Yes... even asteroid flight AI is better. Not to mention you can lose them more often than you should, as they won't dock into your capital once launched and capital AI is also not smart enough to wait for them to do so before jumping from a sector, for instance. And then there's the price too... for the price of a MK2 drone, I can pretty much buy a light fighter. For the price of 2, I can buy a fighter that will outperform even 4 drones any day.

Honestly, fighter drones are totally dysfunctional as they are right now. I personally don' t see any reason or situation to outfit them. Shame, cause I like the concept as well. It's just that the execution is abysmal.

Exactly this.
2 things need to happen:
A) Drones become smarter and cheaper
B) Fighters become customizable, eg shield upgrades, weapons etc. like the skunk.