Does carrier make any sense ?

[idofwsl]

It can't repair fighters ,It can't jump with fighters, It can't supply missiles to fighters, it just slowed down the whole fleet.

[Max Bain]

I would be interested in this as well.

[Karvat]

Really?? I would have considered this a must

[Socratatus]

It carries fighters- that`s its advanatage- and it can`t go fast being super-slow, like in real carriers in reality. A Carrier is useless without protection, its fighters and other escourts protect it - just like in real life. It`s basically just a big momma with little fighting babies.

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

[Max Bain]

It carries fighters- that`s its advanatage- and it can`t go fast being super-slow, like in real carriers in reality. A Carrier is useless without protection, its fighters and other escourts protect it - just like in real life. It`s basically just a big momma with little fighting babies.

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

You know, in real world carriers are used for exactly the points he posted: repair, refill and transport (teleport).
In real world there exists fuel and thats why you need to carry fighters with a carrier...

[idofwsl]

It carries fighters- that`s its advanatage- and it can`t go fast being super-slow, like in real carriers in reality. A Carrier is useless without protection, its fighters and other escourts protect it - just like in real life. It`s basically just a big momma with little fighting babies.

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

It carries fighters for what? I mean in Game.

[naisha]

Wait, carriers dont repair, refuel/rearm fighters and they cant jump anywhere?

Is that true?

[Alci]

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

no, it doesn't. In real life you use carriers for one purpose only. They save fuel. Aircrafts are short ranged vehicles, every kilogram is important for them. Every kilogram of fuel means they can't carry something else they actually need to carry (they don't fly just to consume fuel, right?). And they could not possibly fly all the way over continents (and carry what they need to carry).

That's why RL carriers exists. To load them, slowly move them where they need to be with only little fuel needed (they can stay at one place "forever"), so they may deliver what they need.

In X4 however that is not required. Fighters can fly on their own across the Universe, not hindered by the distance at all. They fly faster, they are stronger, and they are cheaper. Since in X4 logistic is not really an issue (check EVE where it is) and support ships don't exists (resupply, refuel, support with crew - the role of frigates, which are utterly useless in X4 as well), carriers are not required.

More so, since they can't even repair/restock/upgrade ships aboard, they can't do even the "mobile equipment" role. Which is not needed in first place due to how "small" the Universe is, but it would have a purpose.

The only thing that could save carriers in X4 is if they somehow boosted the abilities of theirs fighters. Like +50% shield +50% weapons +50% shied recharge (find the reason in remote power transfer or anything) and such. Without it carriers are only for the fun of having them.

In real situations at the moment they are hindrance and a disadvantage. Their firepower is not relevant. And protecting them only draws firepower required elsewhere. For the same price you could have few corvettes which actually do make a difference.

[Arvel]

It carries fighters- that`s its advanatage- and it can`t go fast being super-slow, like in real carriers in reality. A Carrier is useless without protection, its fighters and other escourts protect it - just like in real life. It`s basically just a big momma with little fighting babies.

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

Carriers don't actually carry fighters though: Any fighters assigned to a carrier will always just fly around following it - making its having multiple landing pads and the ability to hold 40 small ships internally rather pointless. From my (admittedly limited) testing, carriers won't even automatically launch any fighters you've forced to actually land on it if it's in combat.

So carriers do not repair/rearm fighters. They do not automatically store and launch fighters from fight to fight (thus removing them from the game's CPU load when they aren't needed). Fighters do not need them to travel between systems (and in fact can do so far faster on their own.)

In short: Carriers need fixing.

[naisha]

So yes it makes lots of sense, even in the real world.

More so, since they can't even repair/restock/upgrade ships aboard, they can't do even the "mobile equipment" role.

Wow ... I didnt know this was the case.

What's the point of them again, egosoft?

I hope some modder or better yet, egosoft, can add their missing functionalities back like repair, restock or/and at least jump capabilities otherwise these ships are just paperweights, large paperweights.

Again, this is one very questionable and bizarre design decision in X4, among many.

[Alci]

What's the point of them again, egosoft?

well, missing them would be marketing suicide, that's for sure

It's still great to be aboard one while it's fighting. Well it would be if there were not obstacles so you can't see ahead when aboard and if their AI actually was average at least. Now it's kinda lacking.

There is undestructable Khaak structure and it draws a lot of attention. But the ships are very ineffective against non defending stationary target. They constantly move, getting out of firing arc, shooting only like 10-15% of their already bad firing capacity. While you would expect to be more like Battlestar Galactica style. Just standing there, rotating itself to max weapons and keep firing at target. That would at least look awesome

In the past they at least fired strong weapons (but they were equally toothless once you got closer and use their own support ships to help you hitting the hull; it was hard to coordinate your movements at least, but now with the gravity well it's not an issue at all).

As I said. The combat part is very simple. The only role we ever had are assault ships. The other combat roles never existed in any X game. And carriers are not good at that.

As a permanent hotfix I would give them boosting ability for their ships, same for frigates. We get at least one other combat role and they will deserve their place in the fleet. Right now fleet of raw assault ships does much better job on their own.

[Cybertrigger]

Currently in my eyes they make no sense at all and are a waste of money, i have every carrier kind but they are just for show.
I outfitted a Zeus with a conplete fleet of 10 M ships and 40 S ships and let it fight a xenon destroyer, the S ships got all wiped out in minutes, the M ships had minor damage ( up to 20 percent).
Thats when i teleported into my personal nemesis and took out the destroyer myself because the AI is useless.
The lack of being able to refit and repair ships on the carrier is what makes it very unusable, also the carrier itself never engaged into the fight directly just the fleet of ships did.
I had it set up that each M ship ( most of em nemesis with Beam weaponry) had 4 S ships that was guarding the M one.
The AI is useless they just suicide run , they are usefull for taking out a station aslong you yourself take out defenses.

To improve the carrier usefullness they should be able to restock ships, repair damages on ships if the materials are there for it and refill used up missiles if needed.
For something like that would also be then helpfull to restock supplies on the carrier automatic with having like a freighter or two onboard the carrier and have like a restock option for those with being able to set targets for specific items like missile storage, repair components that are needed for your fleet.

[burger1]

Currently in my eyes they make no sense at all and are a waste of money, i have every carrier kind but they are just for show.
I outfitted a Zeus with a conplete fleet of 10 M ships and 40 S ships and let it fight a xenon destroyer, the S ships got all wiped out in minutes, the M ships had minor damage ( up to 20 percent).
Thats when i teleported into my personal nemesis and took out the destroyer myself because the AI is useless.
The lack of being able to refit and repair ships on the carrier is what makes it very unusable, also the carrier itself never engaged into the fight directly just the fleet of ships did.
I had it set up that each M ship ( most of em nemesis with Beam weaponry) had 4 S ships that was guarding the M one.
The AI is useless they just suicide run , they are usefull for taking out a station aslong you yourself take out defenses.

To improve the carrier usefullness they should be able to restock ships, repair damages on ships if the materials are there for it and refill used up missiles if needed.
For something like that would also be then helpfull to restock supplies on the carrier automatic with having like a freighter or two onboard the carrier and have like a restock option for those with being able to set targets for specific items like missile storage, repair components that are needed for your fleet.

Try arming the fighters with missiles. A carrier with missiles + drones can destroy 2 ks easily. Can't service crew on the fighters repair them?

[caiman1776]

I just happily sold five after watching them get decimated on a pirating op against the Argon. I had tried a 45 Pulsar squadron before that against 3 Xenon capital ships and a ton of supporting ships, and only lost 3 of them. Now that I figured out marque selection (shift click, drag), I won't be buying any capital ships anytime soon. I have a freighter with 140 marines aboard to bring in after softening targets for boarding operations, and that is where I am at for now.

[Cybertrigger]

Can't service crew on the fighters repair them?

I have them for days ingame on the carrier each fighter has beside the pilot two marine and one servicecrew on it and there is no progress on repairing the ships.
On purpose i didnt send the damaged ones to a shipyard to get repaired to see if anyhing happens.
They arent getting repaired at all on there own, i havent figured out how usefull the servicecrews actually are and if they are really that usefull.

I had in the fighter setups to begin with missiles also included, they didnt even use one missile before they got totaled, atleast havent seen any while watching it.

I just sat there in the carrier watched 70 million in ships got converted into space dust before i took it down myself with the nemesis ship which has beam weaponry mostly and one intelligent missile launcher which had intelligent heavy missiles installed. Taking then out each subsystem except the engines which i did last, the missiles are quite devestating on the subsystems.
The engines are pretty tough to take out and require a good amount of missiles maybe a torpedo would be good for those but never tried those out so far.

For the carrier the whole fight it basicly did nothing except flying around near it having the attack order, it was in firing range but didnt even shot once with its guns.
I also kinda think its weird that you must always put two identical turrets onto a mounting section and cant lets say do one beam turrent and one missile launcher.

[burger1]

Set the fighters missiles launchers as primary weapons and make sure the ship has a missile type selected. Missiles get used up fast that way. Smart missiles might be the best? If you hit hard enough the ship should die fast.

[Cybertrigger]

I hope soone ror later like in older X games there will be a mod with which you can automaticly restock things like missiles which are bought then by a freighter that you own and refills. i try to avoid those because micro managing those things can get annoying. if you consider a full squadron of shipüs like 50 and you need to refill all of em by hand over and over gets annoying over time.

[Aven Valkyr]

carriers in X4 are about as "pointless" as they were in X3, or any other X game for that matter. Except, that a carrier can be assigned to a task force as a single ship, so your taskforce can be managed as just a handful of capital ships, instead of having a list of 400 ships to have to order around. In a heated battle having to order just a few ships around is a hell of a lot better than scrolling through lists upon lists of ships just to get to that one you need to issue commands to. In my mind that's a bonus, plus, carriers *should* be able to mount flak cannons which actually makes them hella useful in melting enemy fleets of fighters. Fighters should be launched in order to take down other capital ships, not dogfight fighter squadrons. I can see carriers having their place if the turrets work and the AI does its job. Being able to repair fighters would be useful though, maybe if egosoft added mechanics and engineers as roles aboard a carrier, then a damaged fighter could dock and get repaired at the expense of some energy cells or something.

[Requiemfang]

I suspect that since the game was released in such an incomplete state that the things for bigger ships will be improved upon, carriers especially they should be able to repair their docked fighters. I wouldn't expect the devs to add jumpdrives back in unless there was major outcry over it's removal. The devs did state a reason for the removal before the game release months back, but I'm still wondering at the decision to remove it. I didn't find it cheaty to have a jumpdrive on ships when I played X3 or XR. Maybe they're going to reintroduce it at some point who knows. Anyways even if the devs don't address the issues at hand we can always count on the modding community here to fix the issue though I wish we didn't have to entirely rely on modders to fix features the devs left out.

[Tadas]

Also I believe you should not underestimate immersion or fantasy aspect of it. Watching 40 small ships undock is just cool.