Carriers need more ship storage (and other suggestions for them)

[cool_lad]

Carriers overall seem to have way too little in the way of ship storage and capability for their size and price.

They completely dwarf even Destroyers in size, but can seemingly only store 10 more S ships and 10 M class ships over and above L class Destroyers. IMO the overall ship capacity should at least be doubled, if not increased further; with a corresponding increase to armament, the ability to carry much larger quantities of supplies and/or the ability to repair L ships one at a time; getting some use out of those 2 horizontal prongs on the Colossus.

[GCU Grey Area]

Think carrier capacity is adequate myself. Remember the USP of carriers is they are at least an order of magnitude faster at launching fighters due to their high speed launch tubes. Destroyers may be able to carry a lot of fighters too but they're crippled in their deployment speed due to having to wait for the deck lift to raise each one out of internal storage individually. Personally would not keep any more than a handful of fighters aboard a destroyer (normally it's none at all) - waiting for them all to launch is far too tedious. Furthermore, carriers generally have more external docks than their destroyer counterparts which makes fighter retrieval faster too (when dealing with large numbers of fighters).

[waynetarlton]

I don't think the destroyers should be able to carry as many fighters. they are not so crippled by the slow deployment of the fighters if you use "defend" orders, as they never dock and therefore never have to be redeployed.

I think the Carrier Colossus bridge looks somewhat unfinished to me and could be better aesthetically

[Nort The Fragrent]

Carrier’s and destroyers both need a lot more storage! As I use them for traders!
Yip, well defended traders, to resist those persistent Reds.

[csaba]

Carrier’s and destroyers both need a lot more storage! As I use them for traders!
Yip, well defended traders, to resist those persistent Reds.

It's somewhat amusing when a police fighter flies up to a fully manned Condor and finds its cargo full of drugs.

Sometimes I think military capital ships should only be cargo scanned by other caps, police or pirate, otherwise I'd question the sanity of the pilots in the Commonwealth. Looks like common sense is not a requirement to join up.

[GCU Grey Area]

I don't think the destroyers should be able to carry as many fighters. they are not so crippled by the slow deployment of the fighters if you use "defend" orders, as they never dock and therefore never have to be redeployed.

Not a fan of "Defend" orders for fighters. Uses up the Default Behaviour slot & I much prefer "Dock & Wait" (so fighters automatically return & dock at their carrier when they've completed their orders).

[Sandalpocalypse]

yeah imo the problem isnt carrier capacity but the very high default capacity for capital ships.

I don't think destroyers should even have internal storage (beyond the mechanic necessary for launching drones). Maybe one race could have it as a perk.



The new group assignments in 3.0b3 are pretty rad for carriers though. Subordinates are split into Defend (self defense), Interception (proactive attack of nearby small vessels), and Attack (attacks the carriers target afaict).

so with the only order issued being an Attack order on a xenon K, my capital battlegroup assaulted it along with the nemesis and theseus Attack group while in the distance the interception group of Perseus dueled with several approaching xenon fighters.

Defend seems to stay docked now....although i didnt check that explicitly.

Probably needs to be another subordinate slot for Escort, for ships you want to stay in space.

[blanmgr]

I don't think the destroyers should be able to carry as many fighters. they are not so crippled by the slow deployment of the fighters if you use "defend" orders, as they never dock and therefore never have to be redeployed.

I agree that the destroyer should not be able to carry as many fighters or increased the storage number of fighters (both S and M) by double to triple the amount of an standard destroyer to an Carrier and increased launching pads.

[waynetarlton]

I don't think the destroyers should be able to carry as many fighters. they are not so crippled by the slow deployment of the fighters if you use "defend" orders, as they never dock and therefore never have to be redeployed.

Not a fan of "Defend" orders for fighters. Uses up the Default Behaviour slot & I much prefer "Dock & Wait" (so fighters automatically return & dock at their carrier when they've completed their orders).

yeah I tried the "Dock and Wait" orders but then they don't deploy when under attack (unless something's changed recently). That's the only reason I use the "defend" orders.

[cool_lad]

I think that it really need to be noted here that the Behemoth is about 500m long and half as tall, which easily dwarfs even the largest modern carriers (notable since S ships are about the size of a modern jet, and a Nimitz class carrier (which is much smaller than a Behemoth) can fit in about 90 of those; the capacity of 40 thus doesn't really look all that unlikely (and helps with coordinated movement).

The Colossus on the other hand is about 2Km long and 1Km high, which basically makes it gargantuan in comparison to anything. Looking at that, the 50 S ship capacity seems downright insulting for the sheer scale of the carrier. And while the docking area on that may seem massive, it really is miniscule compared to the overall size of even a single arm of the ship.

The ship storage sizes, armament and utility just fail to scale at this level; the carrier doesn't offer utility that's commensurate to it's bulk, but then neither does the Destroyer; they both need more utility (more storage and armament for the carrier, along with maybe other stuff to help out it's attendant fleet (like countermeasure suites or CnC modules), while the destroyer needs to be able to at least repair the ships it does store and get a serious buff to the firepower and range of both its turrets and main batteries.

[Imperial Good]

The issue is not carriers having too little, but rather destroyers have too much. They technically have no defined values for ship storage so instead use the stupidly large defaults.

Carriers will automatically repair their subordinates unlike destroyers. Hence there is value to them housing a fleet.

I would really like to see non-default stats for all the destroyers and carriers. For example the Argon carrier housing more ships than the more heavily defended Paranid one.

[mr.WHO]

The issue is not carriers having too little, but rather destroyers have too much. They technically have no defined values for ship storage so instead use the stupidly large defaults.

Carriers will automatically repair their subordinates unlike destroyers. Hence there is value to them housing a fleet.

I would really like to see non-default stats for all the destroyers and carriers. For example the Argon carrier housing more ships than the more heavily defended Paranid one.

Default stats is not only proplem of destroeyrs/carriers - it's all accross the board - see flare/missile/deployable stats for similar size ships.

I do agree that Destroyers have too big storage. IMO main compliment of destroyer should be drones and all other should be very small like:
Most destroyers - 4S internal storage (so you can have 4 fighter in internal and 4 docked externally).
Odysseus - 4S and 1M internal (so in total 8S and 2M if you store them also in external pad)

However I'd also boost Carrier drone storage a bit more, so that carrier could have hefty combat/cargo/repair drones compliment (right now you have to specialize in one type).

[Imperial Good]

However I'd also boost Carrier drone storage a bit more, so that carrier could have hefty combat/cargo/repair drones compliment (right now you have to specialize in one type).

Except carriers have no need for defence drones. Since they can launch real S and M ships instead. Both Destroyers and Carriers have drone slots intended for use by repair drones so that they can fix up damage quickly. Apparently the supply ships make fantastic drone carriers due to their large drone capacity.

Currently one pretty much feels forced to max out repair drones on destroyers and carriers for maximum repair rate. Unlike defence drones, repair drones do not seem to get lost in low attention combat as well and I think they improve surface element replacement times, which helps in the battles of attrition they can end up in.

Maybe each drone type should have its own separate limit? This would prevent min-maxining a single drone type such as repair drones. This could also be important for diversity since each faction could be given different properties. The Teladi carrier and destroyer might have more drone capacity, like their frigate, to house more repair drones and more defence drones. The Argon house more ship and fewer defence drones. The paranoid house the least ships and drones, especially repair drones but make up for it with higher turret count.

[sh1pman]

There are several things about carriers that I’d like to see rebalanced.

1) Buff their firepower and shields. Currently, their weapons are barely good enough for self defense. In X3, a fighter flying into range of a capship FAA’s will get vaporized in seconds, which feels just right. IMO, carriers should have a strong anti-fighter kill zone around them, while destroyers should specialize on anti-capship and anti-station heavy main weaponry.

2) Buff the hangar size a bit, ~100 S slots should be fine. Destroyer hangars, on the other hand, should be nerfed to ~5 S slots or so. They’re bad at launching fighters anyway. It’ll also give more reasons to have a carrier around if you need fighter support.

3) To balance their improved stats, they need to have much higher resource costs. I’d say they should be ~3-5 times more expensive to build. It’ll also make the cost more consistent with their huge size.

[cool_lad]

I think that the sheer size of these ships needs to be appreciated first. Taking the Behemoth and Colossus as examples:-

1. The Behemoth (at 500m long) is larger than any modern ship and easily larger/longer than many buildings (such as the Empire State Building are tall.
2. The colossus is over 2Km long; which doesn't seem like much till one realizes that this is a ship that can fit the Burj Khalifa in it twice over with room to spare.

The problem is that these ships just fail to scale in every way except size. Which makes the balance and utility of these ships a questionable affair. They're bigger and much easier to hit, but also just bad to control and lacking in firepower, utility and defenses.

Leaving aside the many other issues with L and XL ship balance in general, the utility of these ships needs the following changes to be balanced as fleet leaders/support and actually justify their cost, vulnerability and size:-

1. All military ships capable of storing ships need to be able to repair stored ships for free (the repair laser exists, as do repair drones). Frigates and Destroyers should repair at a slow rate after combat, while Carriers and Auxilliaries should repair fast enough to service and resend ships in the middle of combat.
2. Carrier should have it's storage capacity boosted; the minimum should be 20 M ships and 80 S ships. While the size of the ship makes it capable of much more storage, this should be the minimum in order to actually make the ship feel like it's using it's size rather than just sitting empty. Auxiliary should be have the storage capacity boosted even further, since that's all it is supposed to do.
3. Carrier should be able to use it's repair drones to repair a single L ship at a time (albeit slowly, when out of combat). One can easily see the Colossus doing so by docking the L ship between it's prongs, while the Teladi carrier may do so by coming up to the L ship with it's frontal launch tube.
4. Carriers should be able to assign a resupply/trade assignment to subordinate groups (similar to Auxilliary ships).
5. Carriers require an increase in armament, or some other buff in order to justify their high cost and make them something more valuable than a worse Auxiliary with better tankiness.
6. The launch tubes on these ships should allow them to launch torpedoes. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the launching of heavy torpedoes only be possible from the launch tubes of L ships and above, while Light torpedoes should only be launched from the launch tubes of Frigates.

In general, the utility and power of S ships needs to be trimmed down, while that of larger ships needs to heavily go up in addition to having actual gameplay attached to them beyond just pointing them in a directions and praying stuff works.

[blanmgr]

Leaving aside the many other issues with L and XL ship balance in general, the utility of these ships needs the following changes to be balanced as fleet leaders/support and actually justify their cost, vulnerability and size:-

1. All military ships capable of storing ships need to be able to repair stored ships for free (the repair laser exists, as do repair drones). Frigates and Destroyers should repair at a slow rate after combat, while Carriers and Auxilliaries should repair fast enough to service and resend ships in the middle of combat.
2. Carrier should have it's storage capacity boosted; the minimum should be 20 M ships and 80 S ships. While the size of the ship makes it capable of much more storage, this should be the minimum in order to actually make the ship feel like it's using it's size rather than just sitting empty. Auxiliary should be have the storage capacity boosted even further, since that's all it is supposed to do.
3. Carrier should be able to use it's repair drones to repair a single L ship at a time (albeit slowly, when out of combat). One can easily see the Colossus doing so by docking the L ship between it's prongs, while the Teladi carrier may do so by coming up to the L ship with it's frontal launch tube.
4. Carriers should be able to assign a resupply/trade assignment to subordinate groups (similar to Auxilliary ships).
5. Carriers require an increase in armament, or some other buff in order to justify their high cost and make them something more valuable than a worse Auxiliary with better tankiness.
6. The launch tubes on these ships should allow them to launch torpedoes. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the launching of heavy torpedoes only be possible from the launch tubes of L ships and above, while Light torpedoes should only be launched from the launch tubes of Frigates.

In general, the utility and power of S ships needs to be trimmed down, while that of larger ships needs to heavily go up in addition to having actual gameplay attached to them beyond just pointing them in a directions and praying stuff works.

Your right the sizes of the ships should definitely hold more fighters based the actual ship sizes.

** Carriers should be able to assign a resupply/trade assignment to subordinate groups (similar to Auxiliary ships). This would be amazing.. I hate having my Carrier/Supply ship just take off to who knows where to get supplies but it can be resolved by have a Freighter assigned to it for trading supplies.
** If Carriers cannot be heavily "armored" then it need to be heavily "armed". They are too easily to be taken out for the cost used to be built/purchased.

What is so frustrating, is I can have "5 Heavy Armed Destroyers with Plasma" engage "ONE Xenon I Destroyer" and the single Xenon Destroyer can take out of of my Destroyers. The AI for the Xenon will concentrate every single weapon on a single target then to to the next until all of my Destroyers are destroyed. Also, it seems that the Xenon weapons are already "maxed out with modifications" out of their shipyards. Everyone talks about the Xenon needs to be buff out "MORE" but this is a serious "Out of Balance" situation when you have the Xenon "Out Gunned" and it is being missed.

[Imperial Good]

1) Buff their firepower and shields. Currently, their weapons are barely good enough for self defense. In X3, a fighter flying into range of a capship FAA’s will get vaporized in seconds, which feels just right. IMO, carriers should have a strong anti-fighter kill zone around them, while destroyers should specialize on anti-capship and anti-station heavy main weaponry.

They already have this. Fighters do not last long when 40 fighters and 10 frigates/gunships start shooting back at them. Carriers are purposely weak on guns because they have no need for them, much like real aircraft carriers. They have enoughto swat the odd S ship that gets too close, but can still be overwhelmed if for some reason their 40 fighter squad is distracted.

2) Buff the hangar size a bit, ~100 S slots should be fine. Destroyer hangars, on the other hand, should be nerfed to ~5 S slots or so. They’re bad at launching fighters anyway. It’ll also give more reasons to have a carrier around if you need fighter support.

Their storage is fine mostly. Since carriers also offer repair services.

I do agree with the destroyers needing a nerf with storage.

The problem is that these ships just fail to scale in every way except size. Which makes the balance and utility of these ships a questionable affair. They're bigger and much easier to hit, but also just bad to control and lacking in firepower, utility and defenses.

Like real aircraft carriers. They are meant to stand away from direct combat. Size is a huge problem in warfare and why dreadnaught class warships are no longer used.

All military ships capable of storing ships need to be able to repair stored ships for free (the repair laser exists, as do repair drones). Frigates and Destroyers should repair at a slow rate after combat, while Carriers and Auxilliaries should repair fast enough to service and resend ships in the middle of combat.

Carriers and supply ships already do this. Instantly repair subordinates for free.

Destroyers are not meant to house huge fighter wings. I would say their carrier sized storage for S and M is a bug. Their S and M docking is only for S and M interaction or maybe the odd special purpose ship that gets parked there.

Carrier should have it's storage capacity boosted; the minimum should be 20 M ships and 80 S ships. While the size of the ship makes it capable of much more storage, this should be the minimum in order to actually make the ship feel like it's using it's size rather than just sitting empty. Auxiliary should be have the storage capacity boosted even further, since that's all it is supposed to do.

Auxiliary ship is not meant to house huge fleets. It is not a carrier. It is meant for repairing, and possibly acting as a drone carrier. Most of the inside space can be considered occupied by fabrication machines needed to repair and service other L and XL ships, something a carrier cannot do.

Carrier should be able to use it's repair drones to repair a single L ship at a time (albeit slowly, when out of combat). One can easily see the Colossus doing so by docking the L ship between it's prongs, while the Teladi carrier may do so by coming up to the L ship with it's frontal launch tube.

Too much role overlap with supply ship.

The launch tubes on these ships should allow them to launch torpedoes. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the launching of heavy torpedoes only be possible from the launch tubes of L ships and above, while Light torpedoes should only be launched from the launch tubes of Frigates.

They are fighter launch tubes. Not torpedo launch tubes. It allows them to scramble ships very fast, unlike docking pads.

** If Carriers cannot be heavily "armored" then it need to be heavily "armed". They are too easily to be taken out for the cost used to be built/purchased.

That is an AI problem. The Carrier should not be allowing itself to be hit as much. The fighters should intercept attack waves before they reach the carrier itself. The carrier should under no circumstance try to melee a Xenon I.

What is so frustrating, is I can have "5 Heavy Armed Destroyers with Plasma" engage "ONE Xenon I Destroyer" and the single Xenon Destroyer can take out of of my Destroyers. The AI for the Xenon will concentrate every single weapon on a single target then to to the next until all of my Destroyers are destroyed. Also, it seems that the Xenon weapons are already "maxed out with modifications" out of their shipyards. Everyone talks about the Xenon needs to be buff out "MORE" but this is a serious "Out of Balance" situation when you have the Xenon "Out Gunned" and it is being missed.

The problem is that there is no competitor to the Xenon I. The Xenon I is a dreadnaught/battleship, the only one in X4 currently. Its massive XEN L laser banks rip any ship to shreds very fast.

The player can cope with this by cheesing it. Abusing superior range of batteries to disable turret banks or engines and superior range of turrets to kill it safely. The AI is not smart enough to do this.

As far as I am aware, the Xenon do not use modifications. Their XEN L turrets just are stupidly OP with default stats. They have pulse laser speed and range while also having nearly Plasma DPS.

Out of sector the I is nowhere near as bad. 5 destroyers should have no problem killing it in low attention/out of sector.

[GCU Grey Area]

What is so frustrating, is I can have "5 Heavy Armed Destroyers with Plasma" engage "ONE Xenon I Destroyer" and the single Xenon Destroyer can take out of of my Destroyers. The AI for the Xenon will concentrate every single weapon on a single target then to to the next until all of my Destroyers are destroyed. Also, it seems that the Xenon weapons are already "maxed out with modifications" out of their shipyards. Everyone talks about the Xenon needs to be buff out "MORE" but this is a serious "Out of Balance" situation when you have the Xenon "Out Gunned" and it is being missed.

Did those 5 destroyers have any fighter support?
Fighters can make the world of difference in such encounters (caveat: at least they did prior to 3.0b, not had a chance yet to test whether they still do). The fighters, if they attack en masse before the destroyers go in, can essentially keep an enemy capital locked in place & thoroughly distract it's turrets, leaving allied destroyers to do the bulk of the work of smashing it. With good pilots they can often do this without ever needing to fly within turret range of the enemy. My destroyers tend to run with a full anti-fighter setup on the turrets - they don't need anti-capital turrets because it's comparatively rare for them to get close enough to use them. Recommend around 8-12 heavy fighters per Xenon K (Buzzard Sentinels worked well in my last game), at least double that for a Xenon I. Good idea to also get a carrier to transport them around, rather than relying on destroyer launch bays (much slower deployment rate than a carrier).

[Genoscythe]

After playing around a bit I find carriers unsatifying too. Ship launch speed etc. is completely irrelevant as you can just have ships out all the time, it makes no difference, because there are no more jumpdrives or hyperdrives from previous games that actually gave capships a quick-travel advantage. You could as well just send 50 fighters to engage to a different sector by means of a highway now, there is no more jumping in with 2 carriers and swarming your enemy like in X2,3, Rebirth. Their size does not justify their absolutey weak armament, as does their cost. I wouldn't mind if Ego brings the current carriers closer to a dreadnought class with much heavier weapons and a bump up in price and give us a real carrier class in the L size range. with weaker armament and more drone/fighter-support. Currently it is a thousand times more cost efficient to deploy Corvettes/Frigates and Destroyers as the price stretch between a corvette, frigate and a fighter is too low to bother with S class ships. In previous games the price difference was more noticeable with a good fighter at 250k and a fully fitted corvette at up to 6 mil. Now a fully fitted pulsar can cost you 2,5m whule a fully frigate does cost only 5m? Fighters are economically less relevant and the amount of def drones and carrier can have is only 20.

In short: As of now, carriers can't do much than look cool, the concept of a carrier has become obsolete because all ships are limited to the same means of travel, fighters are too expensive anyway.

[blanmgr]

Did those 5 destroyers have any fighter support?

Actually, they did have fighter support. The problems is by the time they make the "first strike with Bombers (at least 20), the Xenon I will already lock onto the first destroyer and completely eliminated the shields within seconds then move onto the next. By the time the fighter wings have the Xenon I shields down, I have already lost 3 Destroyers due to the rapid firing of the Xenon I.

Which is why I believe there has to be a way to control how and what is stored on the Carriers. You need to be able to have a command "to dock and store" and "dock". Which is very important in increasing the storage amount of fighters so you can have ready to deploy at a moments notice and to pull fighters out of storage. Instead of my moving my Fleet with numerous wings (some of the wings will get to the location well before the Carrier), I can have numerous wings "inside" the Carrier the can be deployed at once instead of waiting for all wings to finally show up. The storage of the Carrier is just too small.

Side Note: Naval Fleet have freighters assigned to the battle group that keeps the Carrier stocked with supplies. Why not allow Freighters be assigned as subordinates to keep the Carrier/Auxiliary supplied to allow them to stay in the area to support?