Pocket Carriers?

[ProjectDanny]

Hello I was thinking why not extend the carrier mechanics to everything that had a docking platform?

For example M ships could have carrier mechanics where the ship lands auto repairs and attacks and lands again just like a carrier.

Same with stations. They attack... land... auto repair.

If a ship has repair drones extend the repair drone ability to any ship docked on the M ship or station simple.

This use to exist in X3 I think they are called TM ships. They was small M ship sized ships that moved extremely fast (imagine like 900ms) and deployed around 4-8 S ships then picked them back up and repaired them all automatically.

A new class of ships in X4 like TM (pocket carriers) would be fantastic for players to experience early carrier mechanics and squad fighting without having to spend hundreds of hours to afford a carrier equip it ect.

The TM could be like an M+ sized ship that could dock on M docks and would be really fun for small scale combat.

Also it might clean up the maps a bit if M ships could carry like 8 ships so you would see just 1 M icon instead of like tons of S icons which might cause lag.

Also extending this to L miners and L destroyers could clean up the map more too and reduce lag if ships could dock at all L ships and all L ships had carrier mechanics too.

It would be fun to assign 2 fighters to an L ship have them protect it...

Or assign 2 S miners to an L ship and increase mining efficency.

TLDR: give everything that has a Dock carrier mechanics and maybe introduce pocket carriers (auto land auto repair)

[vvvvvvvv]

A new class of ships in X4 like TM (pocket carriers) would be

See Boron Guppy.

The main issue here is that if everything acts as a carrier, what's the point of a carrier? To carry an extra ships you can use frigates. Interestingly, Borons do not have a frigate. But they have Guppy. Frigates also can carry repair drones. But they deploy those drones from the landing pad.

[ProjectDanny]

The thing is this wouldn't make XL carriers redundant.

You wouldn't use a M sized carrier that can carry 8 ships to do a full scale invasions into xenon territory that's the role of XL carriers.

Same reason you wouldn't use an M ship to kill a xenon station that's the role of L destroyers.

The role of a small pocket carrier would be to deal with small scale battles.

Like if you got a group of say 10 S xenon ships harassing an area you wouldn't send a massive XL carrier that would take ages to get there.

Instead send a small pocket carrier that can get there fast to deal with the situation.

Now I know you could just send a squad of S ships but then what if they get damaged? Now you gotta micro mange the repair when a pocket carrier can do that for you.

You could also park a pocket carrier at mining locations to deal with khaark instead of parking a massive carrier that is super expensive.

Both XL carriers and Pocket carriers would both be useful in their own situations

But the pocket carrier will allow new players and those who don't have hundreds of millions to experience squad combat and carrier mechanics in early game.

Sure the guppy exists but that forces you to use boron ship and not everyone likes borons. Also you still need 20 in rep before you can use it.

A pocket carrier could be the same as M ships and only need rank 10 in order to use pocket carriers. Again great for new players and early game.

In no way would a pocket carrier replace XL huge carries both would still have their roles.

[vvvvvvvv]

You wouldn't use a M sized carrier that can carry 8 ships to do a full scale invasions into xenon territory that's the role of XL carriers.

I wouldn't use an XL carrier either and instead I'd either personally obliterate entire sector in a single purple modded battleship, or send 20 destroyers to do the same job.

Carriers are not in a very useful spot right now to begin with, which is why I end up not using them for anything other positional defense. I tried to get them to "work" in 7.10. I was not successful.
If you grant carrier autorepair to anything with a dock, there will be no point in using a carrier, because that purple-modded uber-battleship ALSO has docks and it is much faster than a carrier. It doesn't need to have landing spots for every ship to keep repairing them either.

So why would I ever use a carrier?

Like if you got a group of say 10 S xenon ships harassing an area you wouldn't send a massive XL carrier that would take ages to get there.

With 10 S I'd expect pocket carrier to die. Instead I'd send Erlking.

However, normally the area would have a station with at least some defenses and it will take care of mosquito ships.

Also you still need 20 in rep before you can use it.

After 7.5 rep gain speed has greatly increased. You can reach +20 in 4 hours through just missions without any exploit. If Guppies actually fly around, you could board one. I don't know if they do, in current save I haven't bothered with full galaxy satellite coverage yet.

[azaghal]

Personally, I would have liked if we had a bit more early-game options for carriers as well. Something to let the player try out the carrier mechanics way before hitting some kind of mid/late game. It could be some additional ship class - something between the frigates and "light" destroyers, or maybe player could be allowed to retrofit some of the larger civilian ships to act as carriers (probably should require addressing the magical number "40" for internal storage in a lot of large ships). Simply something that would fill-in that "tactical level" itch (although, there's lots of things that would be needed to improve the fighting on tactical level).

As for not making the XL carriers obsolete, it would be a matter of balance - if you are adding auto-repair ability to an existing large miner ship, introduce some drawback as well. Like ships get repaired only up to 80%, rework the internal storage for such ships, maybe _some_ of its maneuverability is lost etc. Not to mention that such ships might not carry the heavy armament, or might even have to sacrifice some of the heavy armament.

And as for XL carries not being that useful for things beyond point defense, that's a whole other topic - I expect smaller carriers would suffer from similar issues.

[GCU Grey Area]

If Guppies actually fly around, you could board one. I don't know if they do, in current save I haven't bothered with full galaxy satellite coverage yet.

They do. Just spotted one in The Void which, along with a handful of Boron S fighters, is fighting a bunch of Xenon S/M ships.

As for main topic, reckon an M ship is far too small to be viable as a carrier. The size constraints imposed by the necessity to be able to land at a standard size M dock would be extremely awkward. Think L is the smallest viable size for a carrier. Would not be opposed to additional Guppy type ships being added for other factions. Did find them fairly useful in my Boron game - had a couple in my main fleet & was handy to be able to detach them as needed from the fleet to defend specific objectives.

There is also the Hyperion which, although rather cramped in terms of S ship docking & hanger space, nevertheless does have carrier functionality & can repair/rearm S ships. Would rather like some more Expeditionary ships for other factions too.

[azaghal]

As for main topic, reckon an M ship is far too small to be viable as a carrier. The size constraints imposed by the necessity to be able to land at a standard size M dock would be extremely awkward. Think L is the smallest viable size for a carrier.

Hm... I think you could come up with some designs even for an M-sized ship. If you have a look at the 1M6S dock, there's no reason why you would not be able to have a bit wider ship that can fit, say, 2x2 in terms of small landing pads. If you have a look at most of the M-sized ships that are docked - they usually occupy a fairly small section of the landing pad. (I think the M-sized pads on large ships might be a bit smaller?)

You could also have designs without internal storage - for example six ships on a deck. If you make the upper (deck) part of the ship to look like an inverted v shape, you could end up saving some horisontal spacing there as well. When I played modded, I do recall some mod introducing a ship where the small ships were docked vertically on the sides of the ship (kinda hanging off of it like "grapes").

For such designs you could even have the drones carry out repairs - without using internal storage.

As for what would be reasonable number of ships that could be fielded this way on a single M-sized ships - that's a matter of balancing and making things somewhat believable. But I think 4-6 ships would be feasible.

[ProjectDanny]

As for main topic, reckon an M ship is far too small to be viable as a carrier. The size constraints imposed by the necessity to be able to land at a standard size M dock would be extremely awkward. Think L is the smallest viable size for a carrier.

Hm... I think you could come up with some designs even for an M-sized ship. If you have a look at the 1M6S dock, there's no reason why you would not be able to have a bit wider ship that can fit, say, 2x2 in terms of small landing pads. If you have a look at most of the M-sized ships that are docked - they usually occupy a fairly small section of the landing pad. (I think the M-sized pads on large ships might be a bit smaller?)

You could also have designs without internal storage - for example six ships on a deck. If you make the upper (deck) part of the ship to look like an inverted v shape, you could end up saving some horisontal spacing there as well. When I played modded, I do recall some mod introducing a ship where the small ships were docked vertically on the sides of the ship (kinda hanging off of it like "grapes").

For such designs you could even have the drones carry out repairs - without using internal storage.

As for what would be reasonable number of ships that could be fielded this way on a single M-sized ships - that's a matter of balancing and making things somewhat believable. But I think 4-6 ships would be feasible.

The designs already exist

https://x3fl.x3tc.net/x3_fl_ships/list. ... s=&r=1&p=0

They are the size of M ships and the way the S ships dock is sort of upside down? Like they hang like a hat on a rack if that makes sense to save room

So this whole idea already exists in X3 so egosoft has done it before.

[LameFox]

I don't remember those repairing. Was it vanilla? I know I used to use the marine repairs mod which also enabled them to repair docked ships, but otherwise repairs seemed harder to come by in X3. I thought most ships that carried fighters were really just doing that, carrying them. And due to jump drives, that was in itself a useful function at the time.

[GCU Grey Area]

The designs already exist

https://x3fl.x3tc.net/x3_fl_ships/list. ... s=&r=1&p=0

They are the size of M ships and the way the S ships dock is sort of upside down? Like they hang like a hat on a rack if that makes sense to save room

So this whole idea already exists in X3 so egosoft has done it before.

I am aware of what a TM looks like. Have been playing these games for over 20 years. That specific ship type was precisely the reason I don't think the concept could be replicated as an M ship. Bolt 4 of X4's S docks together in a line, stick an engine on one end & a bridge on the other, & you'd end up with something approaching Hyperion's size. I do think such a ship would be a useful addition to the game, just not as an M ship.

[vvvvvvvv]

They are the size of M ships and the way the S ships dock is sort of upside down? Like they hang like a hat on a rack if that makes sense to save room

So this whole idea already exists in X3 so egosoft has done it before.

The issue with proposal is ability to repair. This feels like it should require an L or XL ship. If you want a flying coat rack carrying ships with no storage, by all means. Though I'm not seeing much point. But that's just me.

For the record, in the game M dock seems to be 200x120 meters and S dock is 40x40. So, basically... with current ship dimensions, those flying coat hanger designs might not quite fit into M dock. That was not a problem in x3, because there was no internal dock. That's also likely the reason why guppy is an L ship. No size constraints.

Another interesting angle would be to allow frigates to repair other ships. But then again, it is not clear how that interplays with everything else. The positive point here would be that repair drone would be flying outside meaning it can be shot down by someone. So that'll make it a risky process.

Another possibility is to make those drone carriers. Because drones are more compact than S ships.

[SparvieroGed]

A new class of ships in X4 like TM (pocket carriers) would be

See Boron Guppy.

The main issue here is that if everything acts as a carrier, what's the point of a carrier? To carry an extra ships you can use frigates. Interestingly, Borons do not have a frigate. But they have Guppy. Frigates also can carry repair drones. But they deploy those drones from the landing pad.

The point of a carrier is making your fps drop.

[jlehtone]

The issue with proposal is ability to repair. This feels like it should require an L or XL ship. If you want a flying coat rack carrying ships with no storage, by all means. Though I'm not seeing much point. But that's just me.

We have Carriers, Auxiliaries, and Expedition ships -- all L/XL -- that can repair. Even though I have those, I still occasionally take a walk and weld my ship myself.

It would be fun to assign 2 fighters to an L ship have them protect it...

You can do that already, and isn't there now "auto-replace" feature? They sound very expendable.

If someone needs repair vessels, it is Xenon. I don't see their fighters to even visit Wharfs for repairs, like the other factions do.


The "auto-dock" is rather annoying as is -- there are situations where you don't want that happen.

[azaghal]

The designs already exist

https://x3fl.x3tc.net/x3_fl_ships/list. ... s=&r=1&p=0

They are the size of M ships and the way the S ships dock is sort of upside down? Like they hang like a hat on a rack if that makes sense to save room

So this whole idea already exists in X3 so egosoft has done it before.

Eh, apparently I forgot about this... I would kinda love to see a comeback of it. I remember that Litcube's Universe had a very cool script that would make one of those jump in and out of combat zones and deposit the captured ship at your shipyard or something.

I wonder if the ship I saw while playing modded was actually one of those models, just adjusted.