Your Ideas to make Carriers useful

[waynetarlton]

Basic game play:
1. Fleet command control needs overhauling and streamlining.
2. Significantly improved launching and docking.
3. Reduced fighter capacity of destroyers.

Once the above is sorted, then:
A. Carriers could be the repair and maintenance facilities. Perhaps requiring the addition of a sub-manager, specialised supply ships and funds for repair parts, missiles/drones for restocking ships, etc...
B. I like the idea of the non-stacking group buff to shields for nearby ships (potentially limping home/damaged) coming back for repairs.
C. A war room with a special radar watching platform so warring activity can be seen laid out. This might require specialised groups of satellites working in sync (?) or some such.
D. Tractor beams could be a reasonable explanation for improved docking of ships, however each fighter would require specific hardware/software/etc(?)
E. Let me switch off the fighters' standard reply to an order, "I'll wait 'till you tell me to take off", which then requires telling them a second time to do the same thing!

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...they are essentially larger versions of X4 Destroyers that sacrifice the main guns and maybe a couple of turrets for stronger shields and the ability to rapidly deploy waves of S sized ships (up to 10 ships at a time from internal docking) and recover S/M sized vessels faster (up to 8 S sized and up to 4 M sized)...

Carriers don't have enough firepower to be useful in direct combat (which is fine, as they are supposed to rely on their fighters for that), and even ignoring the AI and UI issues, they can't deploy ships as fast as simply not having the ships docked in the first place.

I disagree about the not enough fire power aspect (from personal experience) - sure Destroyers of the same race typically have an extra 2 honking main guns and an extra L turret or two but that does not make the Carriers impotent in direct combat. In the case of the Teladi destroyers and carriers, the L turrets are so badly placed (IMO) that neither ship are not as useful for IS combat as the Paranid/Argon ships. On both the Teladi destroyer and carrier, there are 3 M size turrets that are perfectly positioned for aggressive use but being M class turrets they lack the range and damage potential of their L sized brethren.

As for the ship deployment versus not being docked, that is a weak argument and moot in the main - undocked fighters and other ships are totally vulnerable to attack while in transit, while docked internally they are protected by the relevant carrying ship's shields. In the case of destroyers and other ships (carriers being top of the food chain in this area) you are typically talking many times that of the individual ship - not to mention avoiding the pathing, control, and potential aggro issues from remote ordering a squad of 40 (or more) individual ships from A to B.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Basic game play:
1. Fleet command control needs overhauling and streamlining.
2. Significantly improved launching and docking.
3. Reduced fighter capacity of destroyers.

Once the above is sorted, then:
A. Carriers could be the repair and maintenance facilities. Perhaps requiring the addition of a sub-manager, specialised supply ships and funds for repair parts, missiles/drones for restocking ships, etc...
B. I like the idea of the non-stacking group buff to shields for nearby ships (potentially limping home/damaged) coming back for repairs.
C. A war room with a special radar watching platform so warring activity can be seen laid out. This might require specialised groups of satellites working in sync (?) or some such.
D. Tractor beams could be a reasonable explanation for improved docking of ships, however each fighter would require specific hardware/software/etc(?)
E. Let me switch off the fighters' standard reply to an order, "I'll wait 'till you tell me to take off", which then requires telling them a second time to do the same thing!

Except for 1 and 2 - I disagree for the Vanilla game, food for thought for a mod though.

[pref]

Resupply docked ships (ammo/ware exchange),
Repair docked ships,
A long cooldown jump which needs even longer prep time per 2-4 jumps so they make sense to use instead of sending small ships on their own.
If any trouble happens on the way a small ship group will escape easier due to speed and will have much higher damage output then a carrier.

Otherwise they are only good for cover, and to soak enemy fire. No chance i'd use them as actual carriers - too much hassle and no gain.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

If any trouble happens on the way a small ship group will escape easier due to speed and will have much higher damage output then a carrier.

A small group would be more vulnerable to targetted fire though - carriers are not that much slower than other ships in terms of IS travel and in fact can be faster than the ships they can carry - with a couple of specific exceptions. ALOT depends on how you outfit both the fighters and the carriers.

As for damage output - a carrier + said small group would beat the small group on it's own.

[sh1pman]

As for the ship deployment versus not being docked, that is a weak argument and moot in the main - undocked fighters and other ships are totally vulnerable to attack while in transit, while docked internally they are protected by the relevant carrying ship's shields. In the case of destroyers and other ships (carriers being top of the food chain in this area) you are typically talking many times that of the individual ship - not to mention avoiding the pathing, control, and potential aggro issues from remote ordering a squad of 40 (or more) individual ships from A to B.

Stop misleading people, please. Vulnerable to attack while in transit? That’s literally never an issue. If fighters are using their travel drive, nothing will hit them anyway. Seriously, that’s the stupidest argument for using carriers I’ve ever seen. Please, don’t use it.

Pathing issues? LOL. Have you seen big ships pathing through a sector? Going through jump gates? Avoiding stations? It’s a NIGHTMARE. As I said, order your carrier to get somewhere 5 zones away. Individual fighters will be there AT LEAST 5 times faster. As for IS - XL ship travel drive typically takes ages to fully accelerate, as opposed to fighters’ travel drive. Coupled with carrier’s slow turn rate, I’d say that fighters will get anywhere IS MUCH faster than a carrier.

I said earlier what I think about potential improvements for X4 carriers. Carriers in X4 make ZERO sense and should be replaced by something much more powerful in direct combat, leaving its “carrying” ability as a secondary function, along with making better scripts for subordinate fighters (“undock, kill their engines and turrets, return” in one command).

[ttheobald]

1. Repair of subordinates. Same speed as repair laser.
2. Re-stock of subordinates (subject to allocated budget, and owning one or more "courier" or M-class transports tasked with "restock", which would travel to appropriate factories/equipment docks to buy needed munitions). 1 minute to restock, just like an equipment dock.
3. Re-purchase of destroyed ships (subject to having knowledge of a shipyard that can be purchased from and allocated budget), so as to make the CV a steady fleet presence without micro-management.
2a/3a. When assigned subordinate to a factory, factory manager would allocate budget from available station funds (perhaps to a limit set by player)

combat-wise:

4. Act as "island hub" during attack - park outside of target range, launch subordinates, and send all subordinates in on attack.
4a. Recall subordinates damaged to (player-set % of hull) for repairs under 1.
4b. Recall subordinates empty of munitions for re-stock under 2.

4 makes the CV a "mobile strongpoint" that can be used as an effective assault/siege weapon.

5. Squadron formation - up to X squadrons per CV (perhaps CV captains require "management" levels for additional squadrons?)
5a. Player can task squadrons with "defend CV", "protect target", "attack", "intercept/CAP", "board" etc. Perhaps some tasks require high-skill CV captain.

[Admiral Sausage]

I disagree about the not enough fire power aspect (from personal experience) - sure Destroyers of the same race typically have an extra 2 honking main guns and an extra L turret or two but that does not make the Carriers impotent in direct combat.

For only 50% more money than a destroyer, you can buy a ship that's less powerful than a destroyer. And destroyers don't exactly have stellar performance as they are now.

As for the ship deployment versus not being docked, that is a weak argument and moot in the main - undocked fighters and other ships are totally vulnerable to attack while in transit, while docked internally they are protected by the relevant carrying ship's shields.

You can't just throw the word "moot" in at random as a counterargument; we are mooting the point right now. It's not very likely that you would want to fly a fleet through hostile territory, so that argument is moot, but let's imagine that you want to fly through a Xenon sector to attack a deeper Xenon sector for some reason. There are two possible situations:

1. Travel drives activated. In this case, nothing is going to catch you, so the protection of a carrier's shields is moot.
2. Travel drives not activated. In order to not be overwhelmed by a hypothetical Xenon fleet, you would want to activate travel drives as soon as possible, in which case the extremely long charge time of a carrier's drive is an outright liability.

As for IS - XL ship travel drive typically takes ages to fully accelerate, as opposed to fighters’ travel drive.

I've been experimenting with the best way to keep pirates away from my stations. One of the things I've been trying is a wing consisting of a carrier and some heavy fighters. What typically happens when they spot a pirate nearby is that the fighters will quickly accelerate to top speed, reach the pirate and deal with it by the time the carrier has got about half way there (though "dealing with it" typically involves the pirate escaping because those Kestrels and Discoverers are too fast, so I've switched to light fighters alone now, which are even faster comapred to a carrier). It was a bit different when a pirate destroyer decided to have a go, but the carrier still didn't get there soon enough to do more than poke a few extra holes in the already-doomed pirate ship.

[Lander1979]

Make mobile jump gate ship/stations that the player can use to create their own strategic jump gate network.

[scav_n_ger]

I believe even if carriers got their speed, numerical values and deployment adjusted, they still will be trash, because it will be a choir to equip and control them. I am sure tweaking some numbers will not save them from being either useless, annoyingly bothersome to maintain ..or.. just go kamikaze.

The whole carrier system should be something that actually turns into a valuable mix of hardware (ships) and software (unique, valuable functions, automation, predefined sets of reactions to encounters and different combat scenarios).

The ideas for improvement already exist.
Some of them even have been modded into X3 for years already.

Lucikes CODEA was a great example of how to give carriers some unique, (Immersion vs. QoL) set of functions.
Control and setting-up a carrier up felt very granular, with a loving attention to detail.
In launches M5 scouts to patrol in a circular pattern around the carrier to increase vision.
Detected enemies within different ranges (far, medium, close/danger to carrier) would be assessed and met with a squadron (m5/m4/m3) from the hangar.

Litcubes Universe also is a nice example of how to manage and predefine reactions under different conditions.
Control and setup of a carrier feels very streamlined, very efficient. Resupply and reorganization for the next mission (MLCC) included.
Rules of Engagement controls the fighters missile loadout, target choice, rate-of-fire.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Travel drives activated. In this case, nothing is going to catch you, so the protection of a carrier's shields is moot.

Actually false - combat can stall the travel drive and combat can still occur in travel drive, it can be a bit hairy depending on the precise situation but it can still happen. You also don't need a fleet of opponents for the whole package difference carriers provide to matter either.

Carriers may be double the price of destroyers (depending on build choices) BUT they still have benefits over said destroyers and if people are going to insist on bringing up X3 as a point of comparison then they should also consider that the ship prices for M1s and M2s were typically higher in those games too. 40M credits might net you the just the hull of one of the cheaper carriers (as opposed to a fully equipped one in X4) and in addition credits on the whole were worth more. Consider X2, and the M1s/M2s in that were more expensive still (at least from a hull perspective).

You can't reasonable expect to just bandy around preconceptions of what a given ship type in a given game should be (IYO) without considering ALL the balancing factors and then expect to be taken seriously. Personally, I find that the biggest joke in town is probably the fact that there are some that complain both about how easy credits are (relative to X3), how weak carriers/destroyers are (relative to X3), and also seemingly seem incapable of seeing how balanced the current situation actually is.

The carriers and destroyers may be comparatively weaker (in some direct but moot ways) than their X2/X3 counterparts, but on balance they require significantly less investment too. The whole game balance is both completely different to X2/X3 in some ways and also very similar in others. The issue is that the differences make any apparent similarities on the most part moot - X4 may as well be considered a separate game based on the same universe and lore. In fact, I think all things considered X4 *is* both a true successor to the X-BTF to X3:AP games and a different game in the same breath.

The game engine is different, the combat balance is different, ship balance is different, station construction is different, the economy balance is different, the only thing that it truely has in common with the older games is the general gameplay (at a superficial level - i.e. the old X-motto of Trade-Fight-Build-Think) and the lore (at a much deeper level).

X4 could be considered the X-series equivalent of say Call-to-Power relative to the original Civ1/Civ2.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

As for the ship deployment versus not being docked, that is a weak argument and moot in the main - undocked fighters and other ships are totally vulnerable to attack while in transit, while docked internally they are protected by the relevant carrying ship's shields. In the case of destroyers and other ships (carriers being top of the food chain in this area) you are typically talking many times that of the individual ship - not to mention avoiding the pathing, control, and potential aggro issues from remote ordering a squad of 40 (or more) individual ships from A to B.

Stop misleading people, please. Vulnerable to attack while in transit? That’s literally never an issue. If fighters are using their travel drive, nothing will hit them anyway. Seriously, that’s the stupidest argument for using carriers I’ve ever seen. Please, don’t use it.

Pathing issues? LOL. Have you seen big ships pathing through a sector? Going through jump gates? Avoiding stations? It’s a NIGHTMARE. As I said, order your carrier to get somewhere 5 zones away. Individual fighters will be there AT LEAST 5 times faster. As for IS - XL ship travel drive typically takes ages to fully accelerate, as opposed to fighters’ travel drive. Coupled with carrier’s slow turn rate, I’d say that fighters will get anywhere IS MUCH faster than a carrier.

I said earlier what I think about potential improvements for X4 carriers. Carriers in X4 make ZERO sense and should be replaced by something much more powerful in direct combat, leaving its “carrying” ability as a secondary function, along with making better scripts for subordinate fighters (“undock, kill their engines and turrets, return” in one command).

The only people *misleading others* are those complaining about how useless, pointless, or senseless carriers are. The assertion is based on totally invalid preconceptions and ignore how everything balances against each other in X4 as a whole.

BTW - If you are trying to keep a mixed fleet together then Travel drive is the absolute worst way to engage in transit. Essentially, the only viable way to keep a mixed fleet together is to have them docked at say a carrier or to fly in formation at the speed of the slowest fleet member.

The Odysseus (the only Destroyer with the same ship capacity as a carrier) may be able to match the carriers in terms of internal docking bays but they can not deploy or recover their ships anywhere as near as fast.

[Shehriazad]

I don't think Carriers need better combat stats...they need better UTILITY to give them something to stand out with. People saying carriers need more COMBAT power might be wrong here imho, but the UTILITY of carriers is a joke atm, I see no reason aside from game performance to not just fly hundreds of flighters into battle instead of having to bother with a carrier that gives me nothing but a mobile garage.


Here SOME ideas!

Vastly increased radar Size. 80 - 100KM base? This would allow carriers to stay at the back and oversee the battle, making it a better commandstation. (Make this adjustable to avoid accidental Mapsize expansion!)

Command Module. While on the command module you can assign fighters to groups like in RTS games (Shift 1, 2, 3, 4...don't have to make new keybinds) and give them faster combat orders. Of course you're forced into (M)ap view while using it.
You don't even have to make a new room for this on ships, you can just use one of the consoles used by NPCs in the XL cockpits and give it that functionality.

Teleporter-Room. You can teleport to and from the room without any delay, allowing for rapid repositioning of the player, allowing the player to "Blitz" in and out of combat directly.

Drone-swarming. The Carrier should be able to cover itself in a beeswarm of specialized drones that don't leave the vicinity of the Carrier (15-20KM) and are more heavily armed but have sluggish movement...think of them as moving lasertowers. This would be somewhat of a damage buff but one that could be wittled down and would be vulnerable to missiles. It is a purely defensive measure due to its' maximum range or an offensive last-resort if you are insane enough to get into range of the thing you want to hit with it.




WHY I would recommend such weird changes? Because RESUPPLY ships are coming. THOSE are for repairing and re-arming. So Carriers need their own functionality. And if we copy IRL, there is always some overseer/command point...so why not give incentive to use it like that? So imho Carriers are the ships that should be able to stand close to the battlefield. Give FAST commands, allow the commander to get direct control ASAP and so on.

Destroyers have superior damage
Resupply ships will be moving equipment docks
BOTH of them fulfill their roles...meanwhile carriers are just a parking spot that serves no real point other than that, for something that should be a flying "commander" that's really underwhelming when flying a giant swarm of S/M ships will do the job just as fine.

[Admiral Sausage]

Actually false - combat can stall the travel drive and combat can still occur in travel drive, it can be a bit hairy depending on the precise situation but it can still happen.

There's nothing false there, I never asserted that you could use a travel drive while being hit (though it's not hard to disengage long enough to do so if you have a combat drive. Even the AI can escape like that). Unless you deliberately fly right into the enemy, they just don't react fast enough to catch a ship once it's at travel drive speed. I flew all around the Xenon sectors using my travel drive, and the only time I got hit when not seeking combat was when I stopped to investigate a data vault, and eventually some Xenon ships found me. Later, I also tried ordering an AI fighter around Xenon space, expecting to lose it, and was rather disappointed when it managed to go wherever I told it without incident. The only time it attracted attention was if it stayed around stations or gates too long. Try sending a carrier in and see how far it gets before becoming bogged down.

[sh1pman]

The only people *misleading others* are those complaining about how useless, pointless, or senseless carriers are. The assertion is based on totally invalid preconceptions and ignore how everything balances against each other in X4 as a whole.

BTW - If you are trying to keep a mixed fleet together then Travel drive is the absolute worst way to engage in transit. Essentially, the only viable way to keep a mixed fleet together is to have them docked at say a carrier or to fly in formation at the speed of the slowest fleet member.

The Odysseus (the only Destroyer with the same ship capacity as a carrier) may be able to match the carriers in terms of internal docking bays but they can not deploy or recover their ships anywhere as near as fast.

I’ve been playing X games since X2, and X4 since 1.0. I think I understand a thing or two about how ships balance against each other in these games, and also what kind of situations tend to arise during combat-oriented gameplay. There is no situation in X4 where I’d want to use a carrier, a ship, sole purpose of which is to carry a lot of fighters.

Protection during transfer: literally never an issue with travel drives. Even if it was in issue, I’d want them to aggro and deal with the threat. If the threat is a capital ship, then the carrier wouldn’t help in combat, fighters will do all the work anyway.

Protection during combat: not good enough. As mentioned many times already, carriers die way too quickly to even station drones. Mass fighters will kill a carrier even quicker. In order for me to consider using them in combat, they have to be able to survive an attack by 2-3 destroyers and mass fighters for at least 10 minutes.

Offensive capability: laughable. With L turrets having LESS dps than a single corresponding fighter weapon and an accuracy of a blind mole, they contribute almost nothing to combat effectiveness of your fleet. This needs to change. They should be able to kill 2-3 destroyers (without using fighters, that is) before going down. Point defenses should be able to pop enemy fighters at a reasonable rate. They’re XL ships of the line, after all.

Speed of fighter transportation: SLOWER than fighters themselves, considering navigation through gates, slow travel drive activation and inability to use highways. I’m actually fine with that.

Subordinate management: TERRIBLE. Ideally, I’d want to use my subordinate fighters with no more than three clicks. First, select the carrier on the map. Second, right click on your desired target or an area in space. Finally, select an order like “launch fighters, kill X subsystem, return” or “just kill everything and come back”. If I’m commanding a battleship, I want to not think about individual fighters. They’re just another tool in my arsenal. Probably not even the most important one. Automatically restock missiles, repair damaged fighters and rebuild destroyed ones every time I dock at a shipyard. Fighter (and bomber!) squadrons need to be a scalpel that huge capital ships can use in certain combat situations.

Even more ideally, battleship combat AI would use fighters as it sees fit. E.g. launch 15 fighters to defend against enemy bombers, 20 more to kill enemy capship engines, and 10 more to destroy the turrets. When the fight ends, everyone redocks to the battleship. This is the kind of carrier gameplay that I’d really enjoy.

Wow, that’s a wall of text. So what do you think?

[Vaeo]

Have them freely spawn like, up to 20 fighter drones that they keep re-spawning until the carrier is destroyed.

[Shimrod]

• Ability to repair, resupply fighters internally.
• Ability to construct fighters and missiles internally.
• Have big bay doors open up and fighters all just fly inside en masse.
• Point to point jumpdrive.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Actually false - combat can stall the travel drive and combat can still occur in travel drive, it can be a bit hairy depending on the precise situation but it can still happen.

There's nothing false there, I never asserted that you could use a travel drive while being hit (though it's not hard to disengage long enough to do so if you have a combat drive. Even the AI can escape like that). Unless you deliberately fly right into the enemy, they just don't react fast enough to catch a ship once it's at travel drive speed. I flew all around the Xenon sectors using my travel drive, and the only time I got hit when not seeking combat was when I stopped to investigate a data vault, and eventually some Xenon ships found me. Later, I also tried ordering an AI fighter around Xenon space, expecting to lose it, and was rather disappointed when it managed to go wherever I told it without incident. The only time it attracted attention was if it stayed around stations or gates too long. Try sending a carrier in and see how far it gets before becoming bogged down.

If you equip your ships with combat drives then you typically sacrifice travel speed which is where the Destroyers/Carriers can help with transit times - ignoring current inefficient inter-system travel pathing algorithms which should be fixed by Egosoft. As for the shield aspect, it is not irrelevant because even when on-site in a combat setting the carrier will attract at least some of the fire - carriers are not meant to operate on their own without support ships thus the argument about whether 10-20 high-end fighters are more powerful than 1 carrier is moot - a carrier can carry 40 of those S-sized fighters and at least 10 more M-sized ships.

Ultimately, OOS engagements like you are highlighting are a mixed bag and really are quite moot in the context of this particular discussion - which is about carriers and their utility. Carriers do serve a function and are viable/useful as-is.

Some may scoff at the unique features that carriers do offer currently, but that does not make said features irrelevant or moot. Also what function carriers served in previous X-games, other non-X games, or the real world is moot. It is one thing to say "would it not be nice if..." and another thing to claim "A is useless/senseless without a given feature (or set of features)". I think we can all agree that Egosoft have lots of issues to resolve with X4 but ship balance and capabilities in general is not one of those issues.

I think the fundamental issue here is that Egosoft have balanced ships on the whole as effectively multi-role craft with a bias towards one aspect or another. The only exception here is Gas/Mineral mining because there is no concept of universal cargo space, this means that ships with a given cargo space type are unable to execute roles requiring a different cargo space type.

From my perspective, Egosoft have balanced things across the board pretty fair and reasonably but that balance is a pretty stark contrast to prior X-games in at least some ways. This is not exactly surprising though since the premise of X-Rebirth/X4 is essentially one of post-apocalyptic proportions - the gate network shutdown, the races in general were isolated from each other (to one degree or another) and the resulting chaos resulted in a shift in paradigm to how the races in general approached ship designs. Resources were tight during the shutdown so smaller ships needed to be tougher and larger ships had to be scaled down in terms of overall expectations so they cost less resources to build. Carriers and Destroyers still had their utility but needed to be more adaptable so a shift more towards the multi-role. That is essentially where we are at - Carriers are not pure Carriers, and Destroyers are not pure Destroyers, they are hybrid designs that have been designed/balanced to be deployable on tighter budgets (and potentially long term in greater numbers).

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I’ve been playing X games since X2, and X4 since 1.0. I think I understand a thing or two about how ships balance against each other in these games, and also what kind of situations tend to arise during combat-oriented gameplay. There is no situation in X4 where I’d want to use a carrier, a ship, sole purpose of which is to carry a lot of fighters.

I have also been playing the X-series games since X2, X4 is not X2/X3 though and the way things are balanced against each other is somewhat different.

The mistake is thinking that Carriers in general have a single sole purpose - that was not even true in the other X-games.

[sh1pman]

I’ve been playing X games since X2, and X4 since 1.0. I think I understand a thing or two about how ships balance against each other in these games, and also what kind of situations tend to arise during combat-oriented gameplay. There is no situation in X4 where I’d want to use a carrier, a ship, sole purpose of which is to carry a lot of fighters.

I have also been playing the X-series games since X2, X4 is not X2/X3 though and the way things are balanced against each other is somewhat different.

The mistake is thinking that Carriers in general have a single sole purpose - that was not even true in the other X-games.

See, that's the thing, I want them to be more than just a mobile dock for fighters. I want them to be good capital ships first and carriers second, as an added bonus to their combat effectiveness.